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The Spiritual Guidance 
of Man and of Mankind 



BY 



DR. RUDOLF STEINER 



EDITED BY H. COLLISON 
THE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION 



PRICE, FIFTY CENTS 



The Spiritual Guidance 
of Man and of Mankind 



BY 

DR. RUDOLF STEINER 



EDITED BY H. COLLISON 
THE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION 






1 



COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY H. COLLISON 
The copyright, the publishing rights, and the 
editorial responsibility for the translation of the 
works of Rudolf 'Steiner, Ph.D., with the excep- 
tion of those already under the editorial super- 
vision of Max Gysi, are now vested in Mr. Harry 
CoIIison, M.A., Oxon. 




PREFACE 

In the following pages are reproduced the con- 
tents of some lectures delivered by me at Copen- 
hagen in June last, in connection with the General 
Meeting of the Scandinavian Theosophical Society. 
What is here set forth was therefore spoken to an 
audience acquainted with occult science, or the- 
osophv. A similar acquaintance is assumed in this 
work. It is throughout based on the foundations 
given in my books, "Theosophy" and "An Outline 
of Occult Science. " To anyone taking up the 
present work who is unacquainted with these 
premises, it must needs appear the strange out- 
pouring of mere fancy, but the above-named books 
point out the scientific basis of everything stated in 
this one. 

I have completely re-written the shorthand re- 
port of the lectures ; nevertheless it has been my 
intention on publishing them, to preserve the char- 
acter given in oral delivery. This is specially men- 
tioned because it is fn general my opinion that the 
form of work intended for reading should be quite 
different from that used in speaking. I have ex- 
pressed this principle of mine in all my earlier 
writings, as far as they were intended for the press. 



4 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

If in this instance I have worked out my subject in 
closer connection with the spoken word, it is be- 
cause I have reasons for letting the work appear at 
this juncture, and an adaptation completely in ac- 
cordance with the above rule would take a great 
deal of time. 

Rudolf Steiner. 
Munich, August 20, 1911. 



The Spiritual Guidance of Man and 
and of Mankind 

LECTURE I. 

A man reflecting on his own nature soon be- 
conscious that there is within him a second 
and more powerful self than the one bounded by 
his thoughts, his feelings and! the fully-conscious 
impulses of his will. He becomes aware that he is 
subject to that second self, as to a higher power. 
It is true that at first he will feel it to be a lower 
entity as compared with the one limited by his in- 
telligent and fully-conscious soul, with its inclina- 
tions towards the Good and True. And at first he 
will strive to overcome that lower entity. 

Rut closer self-examination may reveal some- 
thing else about the second self. If we often, in the 
course of our lives, make a kind of survey of our 
acts and experiences, we make a singular discovery 
about ourselves. And the older we are, the more 

nificant do we think that discovery. If we ask 
ourselves what we did or said at a particular period 
of our lives, it turns out that we have done very 
many things which are only really understood in 
later years. Seven or eight, or perhaps twenty 
we did certain things, and we know quite 
well that only now, long afterwards, is our in- 



6 The Spiritual Guidance 

telligence ripe enough to understand what we did 
or said at that earlier period. 

Many people do not make such discoveries about 
themselves, because they do not lay themselves out 
to do so. But it is extremely profitable to hold 
such communion frequently with one's own soul. 
For directly a man becomes aware that he has done 
things in former years which he is only now be- 
ginning to understand, that formerly his intelli- 
gence was not ripe enough to understand them, — 
at a moment such as this, something like the fol- 
lowing feeling arises in the soul : The man feels 
himself protected by a good power, which rules in 
the depths of his own being; he begins to have 
more and more confidence in the fact that really, in 
the highest sense of the word, he is not alone in the 
world, and that everything which he understands, 
and is consciously able to do, is after all but a 
small part of what he really accomplished in the 
world. 

If this observation is often made, it is possible 
to carry out in practical life something which is 
very easy to see theoretically. It is easy to see 
that we should not make much progress in life if 
we had to accomplish everything we have to do, in 
full consciousness, with our intelligence taking 
note of every circumstance affecting us.' In order 



OF MAX A XI) OF MANKIND 7 

this theoretically, we have only to reflect as 
follows: In what section of his life does a human 
being perform those acts which are really most 
important as regards his own existence? When 
dor- he act most wisely for himself? He does this 
from about the time o\ his birth up to that period 

which his memory goes hack when in later life 
he surveys his earthly existence. If he recalls what 
he did three, four or five years ago, and then goes 
farther and farther back, he comes at last to a 
certain point in child'hood, beyond which memory 
cannot go. What lies beyond it may be told by 
parents or others, but a man's own recollection 
only extends to a certain point in the past. That 
point is the moment at which the individual felt 
himself to be an ego. In the lives of people whose 
memory is limited to the normal, there must always 
be such a point, but previously to it, the human 

: lias worked in the wisest possible manner on 
the individual, and never afterwards, when man has 
gained consciousness, can he accomplish such vast 
and magnificent work on himself as he carries out, 
from subconscious motives, during the first year? 
of childhood. 

For we know that at birth man takes into the 
physical world what he has brought with him as 
the result of his former earthlv lives. When he is 



8 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

born, his physical brain, for instance, is but a very 
imperfect instrument. The soul has to work a finer 
organization into that instrument, in order to make 
it the agent of everything which the soul is capable 
of performing. In point of fact the human soul, 
before it is fully conscious, works upon the brain 
so as to make it an instrument for exercising all 
the abilities, aptitudes, qualities, etc., which apper- 
tain to the soul as the result of its former earthly 
lives. This work on a man's own body is directed 
from points of view which are wiser than anything 
which he can subsequently do for himself when in 
possession of full consciousness. 

Moreover, man during this period not only elab- 
orates his brain plastically, but has to learn three 
most important things for his earthly existence. 
The first is the equilibrium of his own body in 
space. The man of the present day entirely over- 
looks the meaning of this statement, which touches 
upon one of the most essential differences between 
man and animals. An animal is destined from the 
outset to develop its equilibrium in space in a cer- 
tain way ; one animal is destined to be a climber, 
another a swimmer, etc. An animal is so organized 
from the beginning as to be able to bear itself 
rightly in space, and this is the case with all animals 
up to and including the mammals most resembling 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND t) 

man. K zoologists would ponder this fact, they 
would lay less emphasis on the number of similar 
hones and muscles in man and animals, etc., for 
this is of much less account than the fact that man 
is not endowed at the outset with the complete 
equipment for his conditions of equilibrium. He 
has first to form them out of the sum total of his 
being. It is significant that man should 1 have to 
work upon himself, in order to make, out of a be- 
ing that cannot walk at all, one that can walk erect. 
It is man himself who gives himself his vertical 
position, or his equilibrium in space. He brings 
himself into relation with the force of gravitation, 
ft will obviously be easy for anyone taking a 
superficial view of the matter to question this state- 
ment, with apparently good reason. It may be said 
that man is just as much organized for his erect 
walk as, for instance, a climbing animal for climb- 
ing. Rut more accurate observation will show that 
it is the peculiarity of the animal's organization 
that causes its position in space. In man it is the 
soul which brings itself into relation with space and 
controls the organization. 

The second thing which man teaches himself, and 

that by means of the entity which proceeds from 

one incarnation to another as the same being, is 

ech. Through speech he comes into relation 



IO THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

with his fellow-men. This relation makes him the 
vehicle of that spiritual life which interpenetrates 
the world primarily through man. Emphasis has 
often been laid, with good reason, on the fact that a 
human being removed, before he could speak, to a 
desert island, and kept apart from his fellows, 
would not learn to talk. On the other hand, what 
we receive by inheritance, what is implanted in us 
for use in later years and is subject to the principles 
of heredity, does not depend on a man's dwelling 
with his fellows. For instance, his inherited con- 
ditions oblige him to change his teeth in his seventh 
year. If it were possible for him to grow up on a 
desert island, he would still change them then. But 
he only learns to talk, when his soul's inner being, 
i.e., that which is carried on from one life to* an- 
other, is stimulated. The germ, however, for the 
development of the larynx must be formed during 
the period at which man has not yet acquired his 
ego-consciousness. Before the time to which his 
memory goes back, he must plant the germ for de- 
veloping his larynx, in order that this may become 
the organ of speech. 

And then there is a third thing : It is not so well 
know r n that man learns this of himself, from that 
part of his inner being which he carries on from 
one incarnation to another. It is the life within the 



< IF MAX AND OF MANKIND I I 

world of thought itself. The elaboration of the 

brain is undertaken because the brain is the instru- 
ment of thought. At the beginning of life, this 
organ is still plastic, because the individual has to 
form it for himself as an instrument of thought, in 
accordance with the intention of the entity which is 
carried on from one life to another. The brain im- 
mediately after birth is, as it was bound to be, in 
accordance with the forces inherited from parents 
and other ancestors. But the individual has to ex- 
press in his thought what he is as an individual 
being, in accordance with his former earthly lives. 
Therefore he must re-model the inherited peculiari- 
ties of his brain, after birth, when he has become 
physically independent of his parents and other 
ancestors. 

We thus see that man accomplishes momentous 
things during the first years of his life. He is work- 
ing on himself in the spirit of the highest wisdom. 
In point of fact, if it were a question of his own 
cleverness, it is possible that he might not accom- 
plish what he does without that cleverness during 
the first period of his life. Why is all this accom- 
plished in those depths of the soul which lie outside 1 
consciousness? This happens because the human 

111 and entire being arc, during the first years of 
earthly life, in much closer connection with the 



[2 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

spiritual worlds of the Higher hierarchies than is 
afterwards the case. A clairvoyant who has gone 
through sufficient spiritual development to be able 
to witness actual spiritual events, sees something 
exceedingly significant at the moment when the 
ego acquires consciousness, i.e., the earliest point 
to which the memory of later years goes back. 
Whereas what we call the child's aura floats round 
it in its earliest years like a wonderful human and 
superhuman power, and, being really the higher 
part of the child, is everywhere continued on into 
the spiritual world, — at the moment to which 
memory goes back, this aura sinks more into the 
inner being of the child. A human being is able to 
feel himself a continuous ego as far back as that 
point of time, because then that which was pre- 
viously in close connection with the higher worlds, 
passed into his ego. Henceforward the conscious- 
ness is at every point brought into connection with 
the external world. This is not the case with a very 
young child,* to whom things appear only as a sur- 
rounding world of dreams. 

Man works on himself by means of a wisdom 
which is not within him. That wisdom is mightier 
and more comprehensive than any conscious wis- 
dom of later years. The higher wisdom becomes' 
obscured in the human soul, which in exchange 
receives consciousness. 



OF MW .WD OF MANKIND I ;> 

higher wisdom works from out of the 

spiritual world deep into the bodily part of man, so 

that man is able by its means to form his brain out 

spirit. It is rightly said that even the wisest may 

learn from a child, for in the child is working the 
n which does not pass later into conscious- 
Through that wisdom man has something 
like telephonic connection with the spiritual beings 
in whose world he lives between death and re-birth. 
From that world there is something still streaming 
into the aura of a child, which is, as an individual 
being, immediately under the guidance of the entire 
spiritual world to which it belongs. Spiritual forces 
from that world continue to flow into a child 1 . They 
cease so to flow at the point of time to which 
memory goes back. It is these forces which enable 
a child to bring itself into a definite relation to 
gravitation. They form the larynx, and so mould 
the brain that it becomes a living instrument for 
the expression of thought, feeling and will. 

What is present in childhood to a supreme de- 
gree, so that the individual is then working out of a 
self which is still in direct connection with higher 
worlds, continues to some extent even in later 
years, although the conditions change in the man- 
ner indicated above. If at a later stage of life we 
feel that we did something years before which we 



I 4 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

are only now able to understand, it is just because 
we previously let ourselves be guided by higher 
wisdom, and only after the lapse of years have we 
attained to an understanding of the reasons of our 
conduct. 

From all this we can feel that, immediately after 
birth, we had not escaped so very far from the 
world in which we were before entering upon physi- 
cal existence, and that we can never really escape 
from it wholly. Our share in higher spirituality 
enters our physical life and accompanies us 
throughout it. We often feel that what is within us 
is not only a higher self which is gradually being 
evolved, but is something higher which is there 
already, and is the motive cause of our so often 
developing beyond ourselves. 

All ideals and artistic creations which man is able 
to produce, as well as all the natural healing forces 
in his own body, by means of which he is continu- 
ally able to adjust the injuries that befall him in 
life, — all these powers do not proceed from ordi- 
nary intellect, but from those deeper forces which 
in our earliest years are at work on our equilibrium 
in space, on the formation of our larynx and on the 
brain. For these same forces are still at work in 
man in later years. When sickness attacks us, it is 
often said that external forces cannot help us, but 



OF MAX AM) OF MANKIND 15 

that our organism must develop the healing powers 
latent within it: by this is meant that there is a 
profoundly wise activity present in humanity. 
Moreover, it is from the same source that proceed 
these best forces whereby knowledge of the 
spiritual world is attained, i.e., true clairvoyance. 

The question now suggests itself, why do the 
higher forces which have been described work 
upon human nature only during early childhood? 
One-half of the answer may be easily given as fol- 
lows : If those higher forces went on working in 
the same way, man would be always a child. He 
would not attain the full ego-consciousness. From 
within his own being must proceed 1 the motive 
power which previously worked on him from with- 
out. But there is a more important reason, which 
explains still more about the mysteries of human 
life than what has just been said, and' that is the 
►Wing : 

It is possible to learn through occult science, 
that the human body, as it exists at its present 

ige of evolution, must be regarded as having ar- 
rived at its present form under different circum- 
nces. It is known to the occultist that this evo- 
lution was effected by means of the working of 
various forces on the sum-total of man's being; 
certain forces worked on the physical body, others 



16 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

on the etheric, others on the astral body. Human 
nature has arrived at its present form through the 
action of those beings whom we call the Luciferic 
and Ahrimanic. By their means it has, in a certain 
way, become worse than it need have been if those 
forces only had been active within it which proceed 
from the spiritual rulers of the cosmos who desire 
to evolve man along straight lines. The causes of 
sorrow, disease and even of death are to be sought 
in the fact that, besides the beings who are evolving 
man in a straight line forwards, there are also 
ruling the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits, who are 
continually crossing the line of straightforward, 
progressive development. 

There is something in what man brings into 
existence at birth, which is better than what he can 
make out of it in later life. This is so, because the 
Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have but little in- 
fluence over man during early childhood ; they are 
virtually only operative in what man makes out of 
himself by his conscious life. If he were to retain 
in full force beyond early childhood that part of his 
being which is better than the rest, he would be 
unable to endure its influence, because his whole 
being is weakened by the opposite forces of Lucifer 
and Ahriman. Man's organism in the physical 
world is so constituted that it is only when he is, so 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND I 7 

to speak, as soft and pliable as a child, that be can 
endure within bim those direct forces of the 
spiritual world which operate within him during 
early childhood, lie would be shattered, if during 
his later life there were still directly working in him 
those forces which underlie the faculty of equi- 
librium in space, and the formation of the larynx 
and the brain. Those forces are so tremendous 
that, if they were to go on working, our organism 
would pine away under the influence of their holi- 
ness. Man must only have recourse to such forces 
for the purpose of that kind of activity which 
brings him into conscious connection with the 
supersensible world. 

But out of this there arises a thought which is of 
great significance, if rightly understood. It is ex- 
pressed in the New Testament in the words "Ex- 
cept ye become as little children, ye cannot enter 
into the Kingdom of Heaven." What then be- 
comes manifest as man's highest ideal, if what has 
just been said be rightly received? Surely this, — 
the drawing ever nearer and nearer to what we 
may call a conscious relation to the forces which 
work in man unknown to him during early child- 
hood. Only it must be borne in mind that man 
would collapse under the power of those forces, if 
they were at once to operate in his conscious life. 



i s THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

For this reason, careful preparation is necessary 
for the attainment of those faculties which induce 
the perception of supersensible worlds. The object 
oi such preparation is to qualify man to bear what 
he is unable to bear in ordinary life. 
* * * 

Now the passing of the individual through suc- 
cessive incarnations is of importance for the col- 
lective evolution of the human race. The latter has 
advanced through successive lives in the past, and 
is still advancing, and parallel with it the earth too 
is moving forwards in its evolution. The time will 
come when the earth will have reached the end of 
its career. Then the earthly planet will fall away 
as a physical entity from the sum-total of human 
souls, just as the human bodly falls away from the 
spirit at death, when, in order to continue living, 
the soul enters the spiritual realm which is adapted 
for it between death and re-birth. When once this 
is realized, it must appear as man's highest ideal to 
have progressed far enough at earthly death, to be 
able to reap all possible benefits which may be 
obtained from earthly life. 

Now those forces which prevent man from being 
able to endure the forces working upon him during 
early childhood come out of the substance of the 
earth. When this has fallen away from a human 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 19 

being, the latter, if he has attained the aim of his 
life, must have advanced far enough to be able 
actual' ive himself up, with his whole being, to 

the powers which at present are only active in man 
during childhood. Thus the object of evolution 
through successive earthly lives is gradually to 
make the whole individual, including therefore the 
conscious part, into an expression of the powers 
which are ruling in him under the influence of the 
spiritual world, — though he does not know it, — 
(hiring the first years of his life. The thought which 
takes possession of the soul after such reflections 
these, must fill it with humility, but also with a 
due consciousness of the dignity of man. The 
thought is this : man is not alone ; there is some- 
thing living within him which is constantly afford- 
ing him proof that he can rise above himself to 
something which is already growing beyond him, 
and which will go on growing from one life to an- 
other. This thought can assume more and more 
definite form ; and in that case it aflfords something 
supremely soothing and elevating, at the same time 
filling the soul with corresponding humility and 
modesty. What is it that man has within him in 
this way? Surely a higher, divine human being, by 
whom he is able to feel himself interpenetrated, 
ing to himself, "He is my guide within n- 
» 



20 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

From such a point of view, it is not long before 
we arrive at the thought that by all the means in 
our power we should strive to be in harmony with 
that within our being which is wiser than conscious 
intelligence. And we shall be referred on from the 
directly conscious self to an enlarged self, in the 
presence of which all false pride and presumption 
will be extinguished and subdued. This feeling de- 
velops into another, which opens the way to ac- 
curate understanding of the nature of present 
human imperfection; and the consciousness of this 
leads to the knowledge that man may become per- 
fect, if once the larger spirituality ruling within him 
is allowed to bear the same relation to his con- 
sciousness which it bore to the unconscious life of 
the soul in early childhood. 

If it often happens that memory does not go 
back as far as the fourth year of a child's life,- it 
may nevertheless be said that the influence of the 
higher spirit-sphere, in the above sense, lasts 
through the first three years. At the end of that 
span of time a child becomes capable of linking its 
impressions of the outer world to the ideas of its 
ego. It is true that this coherent ego-conception 
can only be reckoned as existing as far back as 
memory extends. Yet we must say that virtually 
memory extends to the beginning of the fourth 
year, only it is so weak at the beginning of distinct 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 21 

nsciousness as to be imperceptible. Tt may 
therefore be granted that those higher powers 
which dispose of a human being in the early years 
childhood can be operative for three years; 
therefore man, during the present middle period of 
the earth, is so organized that he can receive these 
Forces for only three years. 

Supposing a man now stood before us, and that 
me cosmic powers could cause his ordinary ego 
to be removed. (For this purpose we must assume 
that it would be possible to remove from the physi- 
. etheric and astral bodies the ordinary ego which 
has gone through the incarnations with the man.) 
And now suppose that an ego could then be intro- 
duced into the three bodies which is working in 
connection with spiritual worlds, what would hap- 
pen to a person thus treated 1 ? At the end of three 
years his body would necessarily be shattered. 
Something would occur, through cosmic karma, 
which would prevent the spirit-being which would 
be in connection with higher worlds, from living 
more than three years in that body.* Only at the 

The vitality of the human organism is main- 
tained at the transition from childhood to later life, 
because the organism is capable of change at that 
period. Later in life, it is no longer susceptible of 

inge, and on this account cannot continue to 

5t with that other Self. 



22 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

end of all his earthly lives will man have that within 
him which will enable him to live more than three 
years with that spirit-being. But then, it is true, 
man will be able to say to himself, "Not I, but that 
Higher One within me, Who was always there, is 
now working in me." Till that time comes, he is 
not able to say this. The most he can say is that 
he feels that higher being, but has not yet pro- 
gressed far enough with his real, actual human ego, 
to be able to bring the other to full life within him. 

Supposing then that, at some time in the middle 
earth-period, a human organism were to come into 
the world, and later in life be freed from his ego by 
the action of certain cosmic powers, receiving in 
exchange the ego which usually only works in man 
during the first three years of life, and which would 
be in connection with the spiritual worlds in which 
man exists between death and re-birth : how long 
would such a person be able to live in an earthly 
body ? About three years. For at the end of that 
time, something would arise through cosmic 
karma, which would destroy the human organism 
in question. 

What is here supposed is, however, a historical 
fact. The human organism which stood in the river 
Jordan at John's baptism when the ego of Jesus of 
Xazareth left the three bodies, contained, after the 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 23 

baptism, in complete conscious development, that 
Jut Self ^\ humanity which usually works with 
smic wisdom on a child without its knowledge. 

At the same time, the necessity arose that this Self 

which was in connection with the higher spirit- t 
world could only live for three years in the ap- 
propriate human organism. Events had then to 
take place which brought the earthly life of that 
being to a close. The outer events in the life of 
Christ Jesus are* to be interpreted as absolutely 

nditioQed by the inner causes just set forth, and 
present themselves as the outward expression of 
those causes. 

We are now able to see the deeper connection 

isting between that which is man's guide in life, 
which streams in upon our childhood like the d'awn 
and is always working below the surface of our 
3 as the best part of us, and that which 
once upon a time entered the whole of human evo- 
lution and was able to dwell for three years in a 
human frame. 

What then is manifested in that "higher" ego, 
which is in connection with the spiritual hierarchies, 
and which in due time entered the body of Jesus of 
Nazareth? This entrance being symbolically repre- 
sented by the sign of the Spirit descending in the 
form of a dove, and by the words, "This is my well- 



24 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

beloved Son, to-day have I begotten him" (for so 
stood the words originally). If we fix our eyes 
upon this picture, w T e are contemplating the highest 
human ideal. For it means nothing else than that 
the history of Jesus of Nazareth is a statement of 
this fact : "The Christ can be discerned in every 
human being." And even if there were no Gospels 
and no tradition, to tell us that once a Christ lived 
on earth, we should yet learn through knowledge 
of human nature that the Christ is living in man. 

The recognition of the forces working in human 
nature during childhood is the recognition of the 
Christ in man. The question now arises, does this 
recognition lead to the further perception of the 
fact that this Christ once really dwelt on earth in a 
human body ? Without bringing forward any docu- 
ments, this question may be answered in the af- 
firmative. For genuine clairvoyant knowledge of 
self leads the man of the present day to see that 
powers are to be discovered in the human soul 
which emanate from the Christ. These powers are 
at work during the first three years of childhood 
without any action being taken by the human be- 
ing. In later life they way be called into action, if 
the Christ be sought within the soul by inner medi- 
tation. Man was not always able, as he is now, to 
find the Christ within himself. There were times 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 25 

when no inner meditation could lead him to the 
Christ. This again we learn from clairvoyant per- 
ception. In the interval between that past time 
when man could not find the Christ in himself, and 
the present time when he can find him, there took 
place Christ's earthly life. And that life itself is the 
cause of man's being able to find the Christ in him- 
self in the manner that has been pointed 1 out. Thus 
to clairvoyant perception the earthly life of Christ 
is proved without any historical records. 

It is just as if the Christ had said, "I will be such 
an ideal for you human beings as, raised to a 
spiritual level, will show you that which is fulfilled 
in each human body." In his early childhood 1 man 
learns from the spirit how to walk physically, i.e., 
he is shown by the spirit his way through earthly 
life. From the spirit he learns to speak, i.e., to 
form truth; or in other words, he develops the 
essence of truth out of sound during the first three 
years of his life. And the life too, which man lives 
on earth as an ego-being, obtains its vital organ 
through what is formed in the first three years of 
childhood. Thus man learns to walk, i.e., to find 
"the way." he learns to present "truth" through his 
physical organism, and he learns to bring "1H 
from the spirit into expression in his body. No 
more significant re-interpretation seems possible 



*6 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

of the words ''Except ye become as little children, 
ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. " And 
momentous is that saying in which the ego-being 
of the Christ comes into expression thus, "I am the 
Way, the Truth and the Life." Just as, unknown 
to a child, the higher spirit-forces are fashioning 
its organism to become the bodily expression of 
the way, the truth and the life, so the spirit of man, 
through being interpenetrated with the Christ, 
gradually becomes the conscious vehicle of the way, 
the truth and the life. He is thereby making him- 
self, in the course of his earthly development, into 
that force which bears sway within him as a child, 
when he is not consciously its vehicle. 

This saying about the way, the truth and the 
life is capable of opening the doors of eternity. It 
sounds to man out of the depths of his soul, if his 
self-knowledge is true and real. 

Such reflections as these open up, in a double 
sense, the vision of the spiritual guidance of the 
individual and of collective humanity. As human 
beings we are able, through self-knowledge, to find 
the Christ within us as the guid'e Whom, since His 
life on earth, we can always reach, because He is 
always in man. And further, if we apply to the 
historical records that we have apprehended with- 
out them, we discover their real nature. They ex- 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 27 

press historically something which is revealed of 
itself in the depths of the soul. They are therefore 
to be accounted as guiding humanity in the same 
direction as the soul itself is proceeding. 

If we thus understand the suggestion of eternity 
in the words, "I am the way, the truth and the life,'' 
we cannot feel ourselves justified in asking, "Why 
S a person who has passed through many in- 
carnations always re-enter life as a child ?" For it 
Incomes evident that this apparent imperfection is 
an ever-recurring reminder of the Highest that is 
in man. And we cannot be reminded often enough, 
— at any rate each time we enter earthly life is not 
too often to he reminded, — of the great fact of 
what man really is with reference to that Being 
who underlies all earthly existence, without being 
touched by its imperfections. 

It is not well to make many definitions or sum- 
maries in occult science or theosophy, or indeed in 
occultism generally. It is better to give a descrip- 
tion, and to try and call forth a feeling of what 
really exists. On this account we are now attempt- 
ing to induce a feeling of what distinguishes the 
first three years of human life, and of the way in 
which this is related to the light that streams from 
the cross on Golgotha. The meaning of this feel- 
ing is that an impulse is passing through human 



28 THE SPIRITUAL CxUIDANCE 

evolution, and that through this impulse the 
Pauline saying, "Not I — but the Christ in me/' will 
become a fact. We have only to know what man is 
in reality, in order to be able to proceed from such 
knowledge to insight into the nature of the Christ. 
When once, however, we have arrived at the Christ- 
idea through true observation of humanity, we 
know that we discover the Christ in the best w T ay if 
we first look for Him in ourselves, and if we then 
return to the Bible records, these are for the first 
time rightly valued. And no one prizes the Bible 
more, or more consciously, than one who has found 
the Christ in this way. It is possible to imagine a 
being, let us say an inhabitant of Mars, descending 
to earth, without ever having heard of the Christ 
and His work. Much that has taken place on earth 
would be incomprehensible to the Martian ; much 
that interests people nowadays would, not interest . 
him. But it would interest him to discover the 
central impulse of earthly evolution, i.e., the Christ- 
idea, as it is expressed in human nature itself. 

One who has grasped this, is able for the first 
time rightly to understand the Bible, for he finds 
expressed 1 there in a marvellous way what he has 
previously observed in himself, and he says : It is 
not necessary to have been brought up with any 
special reverence for the Gospel ; they need only 



OF \i \\ W l> OF MANKIND 2Q 

sented to me, a fully-conscious human being, 
stand revealed in all their greatness, by means 
of what I have learnt through occult science. 
It is indeed not too much to say that a time will 
ne when it will be recognized by people who 
have learned through occult science rightly to ap- 
preciate the contents of the Gospels, that these are 
guides of the human race in a sense which is more 
just to those writings than people have hitherto 
been to them. It is only through knowedge of 
human nature itself that humanity will learn to see 
what is latent in those profound records. It will 
then be said : If there is to be found in the Gospels 
that which forms an integral part of human nature, 
it must have come from the people who wrote these 
documents on earth. Therefore what genuine re- 
flection brings home to us about our own lives, — 
the more so the older we grow — must hold especi- 
ally good with regard to those writers. We our- 
selves have done many things which we only under- 
stand years afterwards, and in the writers of the 
Gospels may be seen people who wrote out of the 
higher self which works in man during childhood, 
that the Gospels are writings emanating from 
the wisdom which moulds human nature. Man 
through his body is a manifestation of spirit, and 
the Gospels arc such a manifestation in writing. 



30 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

On this assumption the idea of inspiration re- 
gains its true and loftier meaning. Just as higher 
forces are at work on the brain during the first 
three years of childhood, so there were higher 
forces from spiritual worlds impressed on the souls 
of the Evangelists, under the influence of which 
they wrote the Gospels. The spiritual guidance of 
humanity is expressed in such a fact as this. For 
the human race must surely be guided, if within it 
there are people working who write records under 
the influence of the same powers that are at work 
on the moulding of man in profound wisdom. And 
just as the individual says or does things which he 
only understands at a later period of life, so col- 
lective humanity has produced in the Evangelists 
means of revelation which can only be understood 
by degrees. The farther humanity progresses, the 
greater will be the understanding of these records. 
The individual can feel spiritual guidance within 
himself; and collective humanity can feel it in those 
of its members who work as did the writers of the 
Gospels. 

The idea thus gained of the guidance of humanity 
may be extended in many directions. Let us sup- 
pose that a man finds disciples, — a few people who 
follow him. Such an one will soon become aware, 
through genuine self-knowledge, that the very fact 



OF MAX WD OF MANKIND 3] 

of his finding disciples gives him the feeling that 

what he has to say docs not originate with himself. 
The case is rather this, — that spiritual powers in 
higher worlds wish to communicate with the dis- 
ciples, and find in the Teacher the fitting instru- 
ment for their manifestation. 

The thought will suggest itself to such a man: 
when 1 was a child I worked on myself by the aid 
of forces proceeding from the spiritual world, and 
what I am now able to give, of my best, must also 
proceed from higher worlds; I may not look upon 
it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. 
Such a man may in fact say: something demonic, 
something like a "daimon" — using the word in the 
-e of a good spiritual power — is working out of 
a spiritual world through me on my disciples. 

Socrates felt something of this kind. Plato tells 
us that he spoke of his "daimon" as of the one who 
led and guided him. Many attempts have been 
made to explain this "daimon" of Socrates, but it 
can only be explained by supposing that Socrates 
was able to feel something like that which results 
from the above reflections. Then we are able to 
understand that throughout the three or four cen- 
turies during which the Socratic principle was 
active in Gi a state of feeling permeated the 

Greek world through Socrates, which prepared the 



3« THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

way for another great event. The feeling that man, 
as he now is, is not the whole of what comes 
through from higher worlds, — this feeling went on 
working. The best of those in whom it was present 
were those who afterwards best understood the 
words, "Not I, but the Christ in me." For they 
could say to themselves : Socrates used to speak of 
a being working as a "daimon" from higher 
worlds ; the Christ-ideal makes clear what Socrates 
meant. Only Socrates could not as yet speak of 
Christ, because in his time no one was able to find 
the Christ-nature within himself. 

Here again we feel something of the spiritual 
guidance of the race, for nothing can be established 
in the world without preparation. Why was it that 
Paul found his best disciples in Greece? Because 
the ground had been prepared there by the teach- 
ing of Socrates and the state of feeling that has 
been described. That is to say, what happens in 
human evolution may be traced back to events 
which operated previously, and made people ripe 
for what was afterwards to be brought to bear 
upon them. Do we not feel here how far the guid- 
ing impulse passing through human evolution ex- 
tends and how at the right moment it places people 
where they will be best used to further evolution? 
In such facts is manifested the guidance of the 
human race in a general way. 



OF MAN AM) OF MANKIND 3$ 

LECTURE II. 

If we turn our attention to what was said by the 
teachers and leaders of ancient Egypt about the 
direction and guidance of the spiritual life of their 
country, we may trace a remarkable parallel be- 
tween what is manifested in the individual life of 
man, and what governs human evolution as a 
whole. It is related that when a Greek once asked 
an Egyptian, who had guided and led his nation 
from ancient times onwards, he answered, "In far 
off times of yore, the gods ruled and taught us, and 
only afterwards men came to be our leaders. " The 
Egyptians named Menes to the Greeks, as their 
first leader on the physical plane to be recognized 
as a human leader. That is to say, the directors of 
the Egyptian people alleged that in earlier times 
the gods themselves — as Greek records say — 
guided and led the Egyptian nation. Such an as- 

rtion, coming down to us from ancient times, 
must, however, be rightly understood. What did 
the Egyptians mean when they said, "Our kings 
and great teachers were gods"? 

The man who thus answered the question of the 

< rreek meant that if any one had gone back into the 

ancient times of the Egyptian nation, and had 

ed those people who felt something within them 

like a higher consciousness, or wisdom from higher 



34 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

worlds, "Who are really your teachers ?" they 
would have answered, "If I wanted to tell you 
about my real teacher, I should not point to such 
and such a person and say, That is my teacher/ 
but I should first have to put myself into a clair- 
voyant state, (it is known from occult science that 
this was comparatively easier in ancient times than 
it is now,) and then I should find my real inspirer 
and teacher, who comes to me only when the eyes 
of my spirit are opened." For in ancient Egypt, 
beings who were not incarnated in a physical 
human body came down amongst men. In those 
remote ages, it was the gods who still ruled and 
taught the Egyptians, and by "gods" they under- 
stood beings who had preceded man in evolution. 

According to occult science, the earth passed 
through an earlier planetary condition, called the 
"Moon-state," before it became "Earth." During 
this condition man was not yet human in the 
present sense of the word ; but there were on the 
old Moon other beings, not possessed of the 
present human form and differently constituted, 
who nevertheless were then at the evolutionary 
stage which man has now attained on earth. We 
may therefore say, that on the ancient Moon-planet 
which has perished, and out of which the earth 
afterwards originated, there lived beings who were 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 35 

man's predecessors. In Christian esoteric language 
they are called Angel-beings (Angeloi) and the be- 
ings immediately above them — Archangels (Arch- 
angeloi). The latter were human at a still earlier 
period than the angels. What are called angels or 
Angeloi in Christian esotericism, and Dhyanic be- 
ings in Eastern mysticism, were "men" during the 
Moon-period. Now these beings, during the 
present earth-period, are a 'stage farther advanced 
than man, — those of them, that is to say, who com- 
pleted their evolution on the Moon. Only at the 
end of the earth's evolution will man have arrived 
at the stage which those beings had reached at the 
end of the Moon-period. 

When the earth-state of our planet began, and 
man appeared on earth, these beings were not able 
to appear in an external human form, for the 
human body of flesh and blood is essentially a pro- 
duct of earth, and is only adapted to the beings 
who are now human. The beings, who are a stage 
farther advanced than man, could not be incarnated 
in human bodies when the earth was beginning its 
evolution. They were only able to take a part in 
the government of the earth by illuminating and 
inspiring ] eople in primeval times in the condition 
to which these attained when clairvoyant. In- 
directly, then, through these clairvoyant people, 







6 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 



the angels intervened to guide the destinies of 
earth. 

Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a 
condition of things during which the leading per- 
sonalities of the nation were clearly conscious of 
their connection with what are called gods, angels, 
or dhyanic beings. Now what sort of beings were 
these, who were not incarnated in a human form of 
flesh and blood, but influenced mankind in the way 
we have described? They were man's prede- 
cessors, who had progressed beyond the human 
stage. 

There is in these days much misuse of a word 
which may in this connection be applied in its- true 
meaning, the word "Superman." If we really wish 
to speak of "Supermen," it is these beings who may 
rightly be so called, who were human during the 
Moon-period, the planetary stage preceding our 
earth and who have now outgrown humanity. They 
were only able to appear in an etheric body to 
clairvoyants. It was thus that they came down to 
earth from spiritual worlds, and ruled there even 
as late as post-Atlantean times. 

These beings had, and still have, the remarkable 
quality of not being obliged to think ; in fact, we 
might even say that they cannot think at all as man 
does. How then does man think? More or less in 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 37 

this way. He starts from a certain point and says, 
"1 understand this or that," and from that point he 
then tries to understand various other things. If 
this were not the method of human thought, school- 
life would not be such a difficult period for many. 
We cannot learn mathematics in a day, because we 
have to begin at a certain point, and go slowly for- 
wards This takes a long time. We cannot survey 
a whole world of thought at a glance, for human 
thought runs its course in time. A system of 
thought does not enter the mind in a flash. We 
have to make an effort, and have to exert our- 
selves, in order to find the sequence of thought. 
The beings described above are without this human 
pecularity. A far-reaching train of thought comes 
into their minds with the same rapidity with which 
an animal makes up its mind that it will snatch at 
something which its instinct tells it is eatable. In- 
stinct and reflective consciousness are in no wise 
distinct in these beings, they are one and the same 
thing. Just as animals have instinct at their stage 
of evolution, in their kingdom, so these dhyanic 
beings or angels have direct spiritual thought and 
conceptions. By virtue of this instinctive inner life 
of conception, they are of an essentially different 
nature from human beings. 



3§ THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

Now we can easily form an idea of the impossi- 
bility of the use by these beings of a brain or physi- 
cal body such as we have. They have to use an 
etheric body, because the human body and brain 
only allow of thoughts in time, whereas these be- 
ings do not develop their thoughts in time, but feel 
the wisdom that is approaching them blaze forth, 
as it were, spontaneously within them. It is im- 
possible for them to think erroneously in the sense 
in which man does. The process of their thought 
is a direct inspiration. Hence the personalities who 
were able to come into contact with these super- 
human or angelic beings, were conscious that they 
were in the presence of unerring wisdom. There- 
fore, even as late as in ancient Egyptian times 
when the man who was the human teacher or king 
was in the presence of his spiritual guide, he felt 
thus : the command which he is giving, the truth 
which he is enunciating, is literally right, and can- 
not be wrong. (This was also felt by those to 
whom the truths were passed on.) 

The clairvoyant guides of the human race were 
able to speak in such a manner that in their words 
people believed they were receiving exactly what 
came down from the spiritual world. In short, 
there was a direct current down from the higher 
spirit-hierarchies which were directing humanity. 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 39 

Thus what works OH the individual in early child- 
hood may he seen working on humanity at large in 
the form of the next world of spirit-hierarchies 
.which hovers over human evolution as a whole. 
This is the next kingdom of the angels or super- 
human beings, standing a step higher than man, 
and, extending directly into spiritual spheres. They 
bring down to earth from those spheres what is 
worked into human civilization. In the child, it is 
on the formation of the body that the higher vvis- 
leaves its impress; in human evolution of past 
- civilization that was so matured. 

Thus the Egyptians, who described themselves 
ig in connection with divinity, felt that the 
soul of humanity was open to the action of spirit 
hierarchies. Just as the soul of a child' opens its 
aura to the hierarchies up to the time mentioned in 
the preceding pages, so, through its work, did the 
whole of humanity open its world to the hierarchic 
with which it was connected. 

This connection was most important in those 
teachers whom we call the holy teachers of India, 
tin- great teachers of the first post-Atlantean or In- 
dian civilization, which unfolded itself in Southern 
a. When the Atlantean catastrophe was over, 
and the physiognomy of the earth had changed, so 
that the new conformation of Asia, Europe and 



40 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

Africa had evolved in the Eastern hemisphere, the 
civilization led by the ancient great teachers of 
India began. This was before the time we have 
mentioned as reported in ancient records. The man 
of to-day is apt to get quite a wrong idea about 
these teachers. If, for example, one of the great 
Indian teachers were to be confronted with an edu- 
cated man of the present day, the latter would gaze 
upon him with astonishment, and perhaps say, "Is 
that a great teacher? I should never have thought 
it." For using the words "clever" or "learned" in 
the sense in which modern people of culture do, the 
holy teachers of ancient India had nothing clever 
to say. They were, in the present sense of the 
words, simple, homely people, who would have 
answered even questions of everyday life in the 
simplest fashion possible. And there were many 
periods during which scarcely anything could be 
elicited from them but what would seem, to an 
educated man of to-day, most insignificant. But 
on the other hand, there were certain times when 
these holy teachers were revealed as something 
more than simple, homely men. At these times 
they were obliged to be together to the number of 
seven, because what each individual was able to 
feel had to combine harmoniously with the other 
six teachers, as though in a consonance of seven 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 4 [ 

unds. For it was then possible for each one to 
something according to his particular gift and 
of development, so that from the harmony 
oi the separate parts which each individual was able 
to sec there arose what comes down to us from 
ancient times as primeval wisdom, that is sup- 
posing we know how to decipher the real occult 
records. These records are not the revelations of 
the Yedas, however much we may admire them. 
What the Indian holy teachers taught is of much 
earlier date than the composition of the Vedas, and 
it is only a feeble echo of their wisdom which lies 
before us in these mighty works. But when each 
of these men was in the presence of a superhuman 
predecessor of humanity, was gazing clairvoyantly 
into higher worlds and listening clairaudiently to 
what was being taught through that predecessor, 
it was as though the sun shone out of their eyes. 
What they were then able to say worked with over- 
powering force on their environment, so that all 
who heard them knew that it was not human life or 

-dom that was speaking, but that gods, super- 
human beings; were influencing human civilization. 

The ancient civilizations had their rise in this 
sounding through to mankind of the knowledge of 
the gods. Only by degrees in post-Atlantean times 
was the door, so to speak, closed into the divine 



42 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

spiritual world which in the Atlantean period had 
still been wide open for the human soul. And in 
the various countries and nations it was felt that 
man was thrown ever more and more on his own 
resources. What is revealed in the case of a child 
appears in humanity at large in a different way. 
The divine spiritual world is first diffused into the 
unconscious soul of a child, and the soul works 
upon the formation of the body. Then comes the 
moment at which the child learns to feel itself an 
"ego" and this is the moment to which its memory 
goes back in later life. This is what makes it pos- 
sible to say that the wisest of men may still learn 
something from the soul of a child. From this 
point, however, the individual is left to himself. 
The ego-consciousness comes into being, and 
everything combines to make it possible for him to 
remember his experiences. 

So, too, in the life of nations there came a time 
when they began to feel themselves more shut off 
from the divine inspiration of their early fore- 
fathers. Just as the child becomes gradually shut 
off from the aura that floats about its head in its 
earliest years, so in the-life of nations did the divine 
ancestors withdraw themselves more and more, 
and mankind was left to its own research and to its 
own knowledge. When history speaks in this man- 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 43 

nor, the fact of the guidance of humanity is realized. 

"Menes" was the Egyptian name of him who in- 

Lgnrated the first "human" civilization, and it is 

at the same time hinted that man thereby became 

liable to error, for thenceforward he was left to 

h Few guidance to the instrument of his brain. 

That man was liable to fall into error is symbolic- 
ally indicated by the fixing of the date of the con- 
struction of the labyrinth at the time when 
humanity was abandoned by the god's ; for the laby- 
rinth is an image of the convolutions of the brain 

[he instrument of man's own thoughts, — wind- 
ings in which the thinker is able to lose himself. 
The Orientals called man as a thinking being 
"Manas" and Manu stands for the first great 
thinker. The Greeks called the first organizer of 
the human principle of thought Minos, and with 
him is associated the myth of the labyrinth, because 
it was felt that, since his time, mankind had gradu- 
ally passed from the direct guidance of the gods to 

nidance in which the "ego" feels the influence of 
the higher spirit-world in a different way. 

Besides those predecessors of man, the true 

supermen, who had completed their humanity on 

the Moon and had become angels, there are, how- 

ither being- who did not perfect their evolu- 

:i on the Moon. The beings called dhyanic in 



44 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

Oriental mysticism and angelic in Christian esoteri- 
cism, consummated their evolution on the ancient 
Moon, and when man began his earthly career were 
already a stage higher than he was. But there 
were other beings who had not finished their evolu- 
tion on the ancient Moon, any more than the higher 
categories of Luciferic beings had finished theirs. 
When the earth-state of our planet began, man as 
we have described him was not the only being 
there. He felt also the inspiration of divinely- 
spiritual beings ; otherwise, like a child, he would 
have been unable to progress. Accordingly, be- 
sides these childlike human beings, there must have 
been also present on the earth, acting through 
them, beings who had completed their evolution on 
the Moon. But between these and man there were 
yet other beings who had not finished their evolu- 
tion on the Moon, — beings of a higher order than 
man, because, even as early as the ancient Moon- 
period, they might have become angels or dhyanic 
beings. At that time, however, they had not come 
to full maturity. They were angels in a backward 
state, yet they far outdistanced man as regards 
everything which man called his own. Generally 
speaking, they are beings occupying the lowest 
grade in the ranks of Luciferic spirits. They hold 
a middle position between men and angels, and 
with them begins the kingdom of Luciferic spirits. 



OF max AND OF mankind 45 

Now it is extremely easy to get an erroneous 

idea about these spirits. We might ask why did 
the divine spirits, the vicegerents of good, allow 
them to fall short, and thereby admit the Luciferic 
principle into humanity? And it might further be 
obj< u this ground, that surely the good god's 

turned everything to good. This question is 
obvi >us. And another misunderstanding which 
might arise, is expressed in the idea that these are 
. il" spirits. Both ideas are merely misunder- 
tidings ; for these spirits are by no means purely 
"< \ il." although the origin of evil in human nature 
is due to them, but they stand midway between 
man and superman. In a certain way they are 
more perfect than men. In all the qualities which 
human beings have to acquire for themselves, these 
spirits have attained a high standard, and they only 
differ from man's predecessors described above in 
being able to incarnate in human bodies whilst man 
is being evolved on earth. This is because they did 
not consummate their humanity on the Moon. 

The dhyanic or angelic beings proper, who are 

the great inspirers of humanity, and to whom the 

gyptian referred as being still their teachers, did 

not appear in human bodies, but could only mani- 

: themselves through human beings. ( )n the 

other hand, the beings in a mid-position between 



46 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

men and angels were still able, in very early times, 
to incarnate in human bodies. Hence amongst the 
human race inhabiting the earth in the Lemurian 
and Atlantean periods, we find people whose inner- 
most soul-nature was that of an angel in a back- 
ward! state ; i.e., in the ancient Lemurian and At- 
lantean periods, there were not only ordinary 
people going about the earth, who through their 
successive incarnations were to arrive at what cor- 
responds to the ideal of humanity, but beings who 
only outwardly appeared like the others. They 
had to bear a human body, for the outward form of 
a human being in the flesh is dependent on earthly 
conditions. Especially in the more ancient times 
did it happen that beings belonging to the lowest 
category of Luciferic individualities were present 
amongst men. And so at the same time when the 
angel-beings were working on human civilization 
through man, Lucifer-beings were also incarnated 
and founding human civilizations in various places. 
And when in the old folk-legends it is related that 
in some place there lived a great man who was the 
founder of a civilization, we are not to understand 
that a Lucifer-being was incarnated who must 
necessarily have been the vehicle of evil, for, on the 
contrary, human civilization received countless 
blessings through those beings. 



6f man and OF mankind 47 

\ it is known through occult science that in 
ancient times, particularly in the Atlantean period, 
ther ed a kind of primitive human language, 

a manner of speech which was similar all over the 
earth, because "speech" in those days came much 
more out of the depths of the soul than it does now. 
This may be gathered from the following: In At- 
lantean times, people felt all outward impressions 
in such a way that if the soul wished to express 
anything outward by a sound, it was constrained to 
a consonant. What therefore existed in space 
: for imitation in a consonant. The blowing 
of the wind, the murmur of the waves, the shelter 
en by a house were felt, and imitated by man in 
consonants. On the other hand, the sorrow or joy 
which was felt inwardly, or even what in another 
being might be feeling, was imitated in a vowel. 
From this we can see that the soul became one, in 
speech, with outer events or beings. The following 
instance is taken from the Akashic Records: A 
man drew near a hut, which was arched in the 
ancient fashion and gave shelter and protection to 
a family. He noticed this, and expressed the pro- 
tective arch by a consonant ; and by a vowel he ex- 
pressed the fact, which he was able to feel, that 
within the hut the souls in bodies were comfort- 
able. Thence arose the thought, "Shelter." "There 



48 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

is a shelter for me, — shelter for human bodies. " 
The thought was then poured forth in consonants 
and vowels, which could not be otherwise than they 
were, because they were a direct impression of ex- 
perience and had but one meaning. This was the 
same all over the earth. It is no dream that there 
was once a primitive human root-language. And, 
in a certain sense, the initiates of all nations are 
still able to feel that language. Indeed there are in 
all languages certain similar sounds which are 
nothing else than the remains of that universal 
language. 

This speech was prompted in human souls by the 
inspiration of the superhuman beings, man's true 
predecessors, who had perfected their evolution on 
the Moon. From this it may be seen that if that 
evolution alone had taken place, the entire human 
race would practically have remained one great 
unity, and there would have been uniformity of 
speech and thought all over the earth. Individu- 
ality and diversity could not have been developed, 
nor at the same time could human freedom. In 
order that man might become individual, cleavages 
had to take place in humanity, and the difference of 
language in different parts of the world is due to 
the work of those teachers in whom a Luciferic 
spirit was incarnated. According as a particular 



OF MAN AM) OF MANKIND 49 

angel-being, who had fallen short in his evolution, 
was incarnated in a particular race, was he able to 
instruct its people in a particular language. Thus 
the ability to speak a separate language is, in all 
races, traceable to the illuminating presence of 
these great beings, who were angels in a backward 
state and stood far above the people of their im- 
mediate environment. For instance, the beings de- 
scribed as the original heroes of the Greeks and 
other nations, and who worked in a human form, 
were those in whom an angel who had fallen short 
was incarnated. Therefore these beings must by 
no means be characterized as entirely "evil." On 
the contrary, they brought to man that which pre- 
destined him to be a free human being all over the 
globe, and they differentiated what otherwise would 
have constituted a uniform whole everywhere on 
earth. This is not only true of languages but of 
many other departments of life. Individualization, 
differentiation, — freedom, we may say, comes from 
the beings who fell short in their Moon-evolution. 
It is true that we might say that it was the purpose 
of tin- wise government of the cosmos to bring all 

ings in planetary evolution to their goal, but if 
this had been done in a direct way, certain things 

>uld not have been attained. Certain beings w 
therefore arrested in their development because the) 



50 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

were to have a special mission in the progress of 
humanity. Since the beings who had fulfilled their 
mission on the Moon would only have been able to 
educate a uniform human race, beings who had 
fallen short on the Moon were set over against 
them, and it thereby became possible for these 
backward ones to turn into good what had been 
really a fault on their part. 

This opens up the question, why do evil, wicked- 
ness, imperfection and disease exist in the world? 
This problem should be looked at from the point of 
view from which we have just considered the im- 
perfect angel-beings. Everything which at any 
time exhibits imperfection or backwardness will 
nevertheless be turned into good in the course of 
evolution. It is of course unnecessary to mention 
that such a truth as this affords no justification for 
bad actions on man's part. 

Thus we already have an answer to the question, 
why d'oes a wise Providence allow certain beings to 
lag behind and not reach their goal? This happens 
just because there will be good reason for it at the 
time following upon the formation of such a pur- 
pose. For it was when nations were not yet able to 
guide and govern themselves that the teachers of 
particular periods and individuals arose. And all 
the different race-teachers, Cadmus, Cheops, 



OF MAX .WD OF MANKIND 51 

Pelops, Theseus, etc., are, in one aspect, angel- 
in the depths of their souls. From this it 
appears that in this respect also, humanity is really 

subject to direction and guidance. 

v at every stage of evolution there are beings 

who lag behind and do not attain the possible goal. 

I us then look once more at the ancient Egyptian 
civilization, which ran its course thousands of years 

• in the Nile valley. Superhuman teachers were 
manifested to the Egyptians, who said that these 
guided mankind 'like gods. At the same 
time, however, other beings were also at work, 
who had only half or partially attained the angelic 
stage. Xow we must fully understand that in 
ancient Egypt man reached a definite stage of evo- 
lution, i.e., that the souls of people of the present 
day had attained a definite stage in the Egyptian 

iod. But it is not only man who gains by letting 
himself be guided; the beings also who direct and 

ide him attain thereby something which furthers 
their evolution. For instance, an angel is some- 
thii after he has guided humanity for a while, 

than he was before that guidance began. His 
guiding work helps him to progress, and this is 
true not only of one who has completed his evolu- 
S an angel, but also of one who has lagged 
behind. All beings are able continually to advance ; 



52 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

everything is in a state of perpetual development ; 
but at every stage beings are left behind. Thus, in 
accordance with what has just been said, there can 
be distinguished in the ancient Egyptian civiliza- 
tion the divine leaders or angels, the semi-divine 
leaders who did not quite attain the angelic stage, 
and the men. But certain beings in the ranks of 
the angels again lag behind, i.e., they do not bring 
all their powers into expression when guiding 
humanity, but remain behind as angels during the 
ancient Egyptian stage of civilization. Similarly 
some of the incomplete angels lag behind. Thus 
whilst men below were progressing, certain indi- 
viduals of the beings above, the d'hyanic spirits or 
angels, fell behind in their evolution. When the 
Egypto-Chaldseic civilization came to an end, and 
the Graeco-Roman period began, certain guiding 
spirits from the former period, who had fallen be- 
hind in their evolution, were present. But they 
could not use their powers, for other angels or 
half-angelic beings had replaced them, and that 
meant that their own evolution was at a standstill. 
Hence there comes under our notice a category 
of beings who might have used their powers during 
the Egyptian period, but did not at that time use 
them fully. In the ensuing Graeco-Roman period 
they were not able to use them, because then they 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 53 

were replaced by other guiding spirits, and all the 

condition- of thai time made their intervention im- 
possible. But jusf as the beings who had not 
reached the angelic stage on the old Moon were 

erwards allotted the task of once more actively 
interposing in human evolution during the earth- 
period, so also the beings who as guiding spirits in 
the Egypto-Chaldaeic civilization had stopped short 
in their development, afterwards received the mis- 

n, as beings who had lagged behind, of again in- 
tervening in civilization. Thus we shall be able to 
watch a later period of civilization in which beings 
sent to be guides are certainly there to direct the 
normal progress of evolution, but in which, at the 
same time, other beings are intervening who were 
left behind at an earlier stage, and more particu- 
larly those who fell behind during the ancient 
Egyptian period. The civilization to which we are 
referring is our own. We live at a time when, side 
by side with the normal directors of humanity, 
others are interposing who were left behind in the 
ancient Egyptian and Chaldaeic period. 

Now we have to look upon the evolution of 

nts and beings in such a way that occurrences 
in the physical world must be considerad only as 
effects or manifestations, the true causes of which 
are to be sought in the spiritual world. On the 



54 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

one hand our civilization is in the main marked by 
an upward movement towards spirituality, and this 
tendency of certain people towards spirituality is 
the manifestation of the spiritual directors of our 
contemporary humanity, who have attained their 
own normal stage of development. In everything 
which tends to lead man up to the great spiritual 
wisdom-truths transmitted to us by theosophy, 
these normal guides of our evolution are mani- 
fested. But the beings out-distanced during the 
Egvpto-Chaldaeic civilization are also affecting the 
tendencies of our age. They are manifested in 
much that is being thought and done at the present 
time, and will again be manifested in what lies in 
the near future. They are revealed in everything 
which gives a materialistic stamp to our civiliza- 
tion, and may often be seen even in aspirations 
after spiritual things. In our age we are virtually 
experiencing a revival of Egyptian civilization. 
The beings who are to be looked upon as the in- 
visible directors of what takes place in the physical 
world, fall accordingly into two classes. The first 
includes those spiritual individualities who have 
passed through their own normal course of de- 
velopment up to the present time. Hence they were 
able to interpose in the guidance of our civilization, 
whilst the directors of the preceding Graeco- 



OF MAN AND i)V MAX KIND 55 

Roman period were gradually finishing their task 

of guiding civilization during the first thousand 

Christianity. The second class, who work 

simultaneously with the first class of beings, are 

ritual individualities who did not complete their 

• lution during the Rgvpto-Chaldaeic civilization. 
They were obliged to remain inactive during the 
ensuing (iraeco-.Roman period, but are now able 
to resume their activity because our present age 
has points of resemblance to the Egypto-Chaldseic 
period. It thus comes about that many things arise 
in contemporary humanity which look like a re- 
vival of ancient Egyptian forces, but there is also 
much which is like a materialistic resuscitation of 
forces which then worked spiritually. To illustrate 
this, we may point to an example of the way in 
which ancient Egyptian knowledge has been re- 
vived in our days. 

Let US think of Kepler. He was quite posse- 
by the feeling of the harmony of the cosmos, and 
this idea was expressed in bis important mathe- 
matical laws of the mechanism of the heavens, the 

/ailed laws of Kepler. These are outwardly very 
dry and abstruse, but in Kepler they were the out- 
come of an understanding of the harmony of the 
universe. We may read in Kepler's writings that 
in order to discover what he did, he was obliged to 



56 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

go to the sacred Egyptian mysteries, purloin their 
temple-vessels, and by this means bring knowledge 
into the world, the importance of which to 
humanity would only be known in later times. 

This utterance of Kepler's is by no means an 
empty phrase, but contains a dim consciousness of 
a revival of what he had learned in the Egyptian 
period, during a former incarnation. We may cer- 
tainly entertain the idea that Kepler assimilated 
the ancient Egyptian wisdom during one of his 
previous lives, and that it reappears in his soul in a 
new form, adapted to a later age. That a material- 
istic impulse should enter our civilization through 
the Egyptian spirit is quite intelligible, for Egyptian 
spirituality was wrapped in a vigorous materialism, 
which found expression, for instance, in their em- 
balming the physical bodies of the dead. This 
meant that they attached value to the preservation 
of the physical body. This has come down to us 
from the Egyptian period in a different form', but in 
one corresponding to our time. The same forces 
which had not then run their course, affect our age, 
but in a different way. The temper of mind which 
embalmed dead bodies gave rise to that which 
idolizes the merely material. The Egyptian em- 
balmed dead bodies and thereby preserved what he 
accounted valuable. He thought that the develop- 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 57 

ment oi the soul after death was connected with the 
preservation of the physical, material body. The 
•1 anatomist dissects what he sees, and thinks 
that in this way he understands the laws of the 
human organism. Thus in our modern science 
there are living the forces of the ancient Egyptian 
and Chaldaeic world, which then were progressive 
forces, but which now represent what has lagged 
behind, and which must be recognized for what 
they are. if a correct estimate is to be formed of the 
character of the present time. These forces will 
injure a man of the present day if he does not know 
their real significance. He will take no harm from 
them, but will turn them to good account, if he 
knows their effect and thereby brings himself into 
the right relation to them. They have their value, 
for without them we should not have the present 
great achievements in technique, industries, etc. 
They are forces belonging to Luciferic beings of 
the lowest stage, and the danger lies in the fact that 
if they are not recognized aright, the materialistic 
impulses of the present time are thought to be the 
only p< ones, and the other forces, which lead 

up to the spiritual world, arc not seen. For this 
reason any clear diagnosis is certain to discern two 
currents of thought in the present age. 



5$ THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

Now if a wise Providence had not allowed cer- 
tain beings in the Egypto-Chaldaeic period to fall 
short in their evolution, our contemporary civiliza- 
tion would have been wanting in necessary weight. 
In that case only those forces would be operative 
which would bring man into the spiritual world by 
main force. People would be only too ready to 
yield themselves up to those forces, and would be- 
come dreamers. The only life they would wish to 
know about would be one which is being spiritual- 
ized as fast as possible, and their standard of action 
would be a view of life which showed a certain de- 
gree of contempt for what is physical and material. 
But the present epoch of civilization can only fulfill 
its mission if the forces of the material world are 
brought to the fullest perfection, and if thus by de- 
grees their sphere too is won for spirituality. Just 
as the fairest things may become corrupters and 
tempters of mankind if pursued in a one-sided way, 
so if this one-sidedhess took root, there would be 
great danger that all kinds of good efforts would 
come into manifestation as fanaticism. True 
though it is that humanity is helped forward by its 
noble impulses it is also true that wild and fanatical 
advocacy of the noblest impulses may bring about 
the worst of results as far as true evolution is con- 
cerned. Only when people strive after the highest 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 59 

modestly and sensibly, not out ^\ wild fanaticism, 
can anything beneficial to the progress of humanity 
take place. In order that the work (lone on earth 
at the present clay may have the necessary weight, 
and that material beings o\ the physical plane max 
he understood, the wisdom which directs the 

vernment of the world left those forces behind 
which would normally have completed their evolu- 
tion during the Egyptian period ; and it is they who 
are now directing man's attention to physical life. 

It is obvious from the foregoing- that evolution 
takes place under the influence both of normally 
pre e beings and of those who lag behind. 

Clairvoyant vision is able to trace the co-operation 
of both classes of beings in the super-sensible 

rid. and hence is able to comprehend the 
spiritual events of which the physical facts sur- 
rounding humanity are the manifestations. 

We observe that, in order to understand cosmic 
events, it is not enough to have spiritual eyes and 
ears opened to the spiritual world by some kind of 
exercise. This only means that we see what is 
there, that we are cognizant of spiritual beings and 
know that they are entities of the soul-world or 
spirit-sphere. But it is also necessary to recognize 
what kinds of beings they are. We may meet some 

ng of the soul or spirit world, but we do not 



60 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

necessarily know whether it is progressing in its 
evolution, or whether it belongs to the category of 
powers that have lagged behind ; whether therefore 
it is pushing evolution onwards, or hindering it. 
Those people who acquire clairvoyant faculties and 
do not at the same time gain complete understand- 
ing of the conditions of human evolution which we 
have described may know absolutely nothing of 
the nature of the beings whom they meet. Mere 
clairvoyance must be supplemented by clear judg- 
ment of what is seen in the supersensible world. 
There is urgent necessity for this especially in our 
own time, but it had not always to be so much con- 
sidered. If we go back to very ancient civilizations, 
we find different conditions. If in the most ancient 
Egyptian times a person was clairvoyant, and was 
confronted with a being from the supersensible 
world, the latter had, as it were, written on his fore- 
head who he was. The clairvoyant could not mis- 
take him. Now, however, the possibility of mis- 
understanding is very great. Whereas humanity in 
early times still stood very near the kingdom of 
the spiritual hierarchies and could see what beings 
it was meeting, it is now very easy to be mistaken, 
and the only protection against being severely in- 
jured is the effort to gain ideas and conceptions 
like those indicated above. 



OH max WD OF MANKIND 61 

A person who is able to look into the spiritual 
world is called esoterically a "clairvoyant," but 
merely to be clairvoyant is not enough, for such a 

man might be able to see well enough but not able 
discriminate. He who has acquired the faculty 
of distinguishing one from another the beings and 
events oi higher worlds, is called an "Initiate." In- 
itiation brings with it the possibility of distinguish- 
ing between different kinds of beings. Thus it is 
possible to be clairvoyant in the higher worlds 
without being an Initiate. In ancient times dis- 
tinguishing between spirits was not specially im- 
portant, for when the ancient occult schools had 
brought a pupil so far as clairvoyance, there was 
no great danger of error. Now, however, this 
dan ists to a high degree. Therefore in all 

esoteric training, care should be taken that initia- 
tion should be acquired in condition to clairvoy- 
ance. In proportion to the extent of his clairvoy- 
ance must a man become capable of distinguishing 
tween the various kinds of supersensible beings 
and event-. 

In modern times the powers guiding humanity 
arc faced by the Special task of bringing about a 
balance between the two principles of clairvoyance 
and initiation. Leader- of Spiritual training had 

necessarily to pay attention to this at the begin- 



62 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

ning of the modern era. Therefore the esoteric 
spiritual movement which is adapted to present 
conditions, always makes a point of maintaining 
the right proportion between clairvoyance and in- , 
itiation. This became necessary at the time when 
mankind was passing through a crisis with regard 
to its higher knowledge. That time was the thir- 
teenth century. About the year 1250 was the point 
of time when mankind felt itself most shut out from 
the spiritual world. A clairvoyant looking back 
upon that period sees the following: The most 
eminent minds of that time who were striving after 
some kind of higher knowledge, could only say to 
themselves, "What our reason, our intellect, our 
spiritual knowledge are able to find out is limited 
to the physical world around us. With all our 
human endeavor and power of perception, we can- 
not reach a spiritual world. We only know of it by 
accepting the information concerning it which our 
forefathers bequeathed us." This was the time 
when direct view of the higher worlds was ob- 
scured. That this can be said of the era in which 
scholasticism flourished, is not without significance. 
About the year 1250 was the time when men were 
compelled to fix a boundary between what they 
were able to apprehend for themselves,, and what 
they had to believe from the impression made upon 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 63 

them by the traditions which had been handed 

down. What they could find out for themselves 
then became limited to the physical world of sense. 

fterwards, however, came the time when there 
was more and more possibility of again winning a 
view of the spiritual world. But the new clair- 

VOyance was of a different kind from the old, which 
virtually became extinct just about the year 1250. 
In the new form of clairvoyance, western esoteri- 
cism was obliged strictly to uphold the principle 
that initiation must be the guide of spiritual sight 
I hearing. This was the special task assigned to 
an esoteric current which then entered the stream 
of European civilization. As the year 1250 drew 
near there arose a new kind of guidance into the 
supersensible worlds. 

This guidance was prepared by the spirits then 
►ehind outer historical events, who cen- 
turies before had provided for the kind of esoteric 
training which would be rendered necessary by the 
conditions prevailing in 1250. If the term "modern 
esotericism" be not misused, it may be applied to 
the spiritual work of those very highly evolved per- 
sonalities. External history knows nothing of 
them, but what they did is apparent in every form 
of civilization which has developed since the thir- 
teenth century* 



64 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

The importance of the year 1250 for the spiritual 
evolution of humanity is specially apparent if we 
look at the result of clairvoyant research given in 
the following fact : Even those individualities who 
had attained high stages of spiritual development 
in previous incarnations, and who were re-incar- 
nated about 1250, were compelled for a while to 
undergo a complete clouding over of their direct 
view of the spiritual world. Quite enlightened indi- 
viduals were as though cut off from the spiritual 
world, and their only knowledge of it was through 
their remembrance of earlier incarnations. Thus we 
see how necessary it was that from that time on- 
wards a new element should be brought into the 
spiritual guidance of humanity. This element was 
true modern esotericism. By its means it is for the 
first time possible rightly to understand how that 
which we call the "Christ-impulse" may intervene 
to guide the whole of mankind and the individual 
also, in all possible eventualities. 

Between the accomplishment of the Mystery of 
Golgotha and the beginnings of modern esoteri- 
cism, lies the first period of the working of the 
Christ-principle in human souls. During that 
period, people received Christ to a certain degree 
unconsciously as far as their higher spirit-forces 
were concerned, and this caused them afterwards, 



OF M \N AND OF MANKIND 65 

when they were obliged to receive them con 

MSly, to make all kinds of mistakes, and to lose 
themselves in a maze instead of understanding 
Christ. In primitive Christian times we may trace 
the adoption of the Christ-principle by the lower 

Then came a new period, in which 
mankind of to-day is still living. Indeed, in a cer 
tain respect, people are only now beginning to 

understand the Christ principle with the higher 
1 their souls. In the further course of 
this work it will he shown that the decline of super- 
sible knowledge down to the thirteenth century, 
and on the other hand its slow revival since that 
time, coincide with the interposition of the Christ- 
impulse in human evolution. 

We may therefore take modern esotericism to 
mean the raising of the Christ-impulse to be the 
motive power in the guidance of souls desiring to 
w<>rk their way to a knowledge of higher worlds, in 
accordance with the evolutionary conditions of 
tern tin: 



66 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

LECTURE III. 

In accordance with what has been said in the 
preceding chapters, the spiritual guidance of the 
course of human evolution may be sought for 
among those beings who went through their stage 
of humanity during the previous embodiment of 
the Earth-planet, i.e., during the ancient Moon 
period. This guidance stood contrasted with an- 
other which checked, and yet in a certain sense 
furthered, whilst checking the first, and which was 
carried out by those beings who had not completed 
their own evolution during the Moon-period. 
Reference is made in both these cases to those 
guiding beings immediately above man — to those 
who lead humanity forward, and to those who pro- 
voke resistance, thereby strengthening and con- 
firming the forces arising through the progressive 
beings, by bestowing on them balance and indi- 
viduality. In Christian Esotericism, these two 
classes of superhuman beings are called Angels 
(Angeloi). Above these beings in an ascending 
order, stand those of the higher hierarchies, the 
Archangels, the Archai, etc., who likewise take part 
in the guidance of humanity. 

Within the ranks of these different beings there 
are all possible gradations in regard to perfection. 
In the category of the Angels there are at the be- 
ginning of the present Earth-evolution, some 



OF MAX AND OF M UNKIND 67 

ng high and others less developed. The 
rmer have progressed far beyond the minimum 
of their Moon-development. Between these and 
those who had just reached this minimum when the 
Moon-evolution had conic to an end, and the 
lution had begun, there arc all possible 
Conformably with this graduation of 
rank, the beings in question entered during the 
rth-period upon the leadership of human evolu- 
tion. Thus the evolution of the Egyptian civiliza- 
tion was effected under the guidance of beings who 
had become more perfected on the Moon than 
ho were the leaders of the Graeco-Roman 
period, and these again were more perfect than 
those who have the leadership at the present time. 
In the Egyptian as also in the Greek Period, those 
who later on assumed the direction, were mean- 
while developing, and making themselves ready to 
guide the civilization of later periods. 

he time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, 

fen consecutive epochs of civilization have to be 

differentiated; the first is the ancient Indian epoch, 

and it is followed by the ancient Persian.* Idle 

*By "Ancient Persian" is not meant "Persian" in 
usual historic sense, but a pre-historic Asiatic 
(Iranian) civilization which developed in that land 
r which, later on, the Persian Kingdom 1 
led. 



68 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

third is the Egypto-Chalcfeeic, the fourth is the 
(iraeco-Roman, and the fifth is our own, which, 
since about the twelfth century, has been gradually 
developing and in which we are still living. And as 
the separate periods overlap, we see already in our 
times those early events preparing which will lead 
over into the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And a 
seventh epoch will succeed the sixth in due course. 
On closer observation we find the following evi- 
dence with regard to the guidance of mankind. It 
was during the third epoch of civilization, the 
Egypto-Chaldaeic, that the Angels (or lower 
dhyanic beings according to Oriental mysticism) 
were to some extent independent leaders of 
humanity. They were not so during the ancient 
Persian civilization. For then they were subject to 
a higher direction in a much greater degree than in 
the Egyptian times, and had to regulate everything 
in conformity with the impulses of the hierarchies 
immediately above them. In this way everything 
was under the immediate guidance of the Angels, 
but these themselves submitted to the rulership of 
the Archangels. And in the Indian epoch when 
post-Atlantean life had reached such a height in 
spiritual matters as has never been attained since — 
a natural height under the direction of great human 
teachers — then the Archangels themselves were 



•I \\ AND OF MANKIND 69 

subject in a similar sense to the guidance of the 
Axchai or Primal Powers. Thus if we trace the 
evolution oi humanity from the Indian epoch 
through the ancient Persian and EgyptO-Chaldaeic 

.lization. we may say that certain beings of the 
higher hierarchies withdrew as it were, ever more 
and more from the direct guidance of humanity. 

id in the fourth post-Atlantean period of civiliza- 
tion, i.e., the Graeco-Roman epoch, man had he- 
come in a certain sense quite independent. The 
guiding super-human beings were certainly inter- 
vening to develop humanity, but only in such a wax- 
that the reins were tightened as little as possible, 
and also that the spiritual leaders themselves might 
profit as much through the deeds of men as men 
profited through them. Hence arose that peculiar 
and quite "human" civilization in the Graeco- 
Roman time in which man was made to rely en- 
tirely on himself. For all the distinctive character- 
rt and political life in Greek and Roman 
times are traceable to the fact that man had to live 
out his own life in his own way. 

when we look back to the most ancient times 
of civilization, we then find evolution gtiided by be- 
ings who had accomplished their evolution as far 

the human - earlier planetary conditions. 

It the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization 



JO THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

was intended as a time when man should be put to 
the test as much as possible, and consequently was 
the time when the whole spiritual guidance of 
humanity had to be re-organized. We are now 
living in the fifth post-Atlantean period of civiliza- 
tion. The leading beings of this period belong to 
the same hierarchy as that which ruled the ancient 
Egyptians and Chaldseans. In fact those beings 
who then took the lead, have again begun to be 
active in our times, for it has been stated that cer- 
tain beings remained behind during the Egypto- 
Chaldseic civilization, and that these are to be found 
manifested in the materialistic feelings and percep- 
tions of our own period. 

Now the progress made by the beings of each 
class of Angels or lower dhyanic beings — the class 
which leads mankind forward and the class which 
obstructs — consists in their being able to be leaders 
among the Egyptians and Chald'seans by means of 
those qualities which they had acquired in pri- 
mordial times, and which they had further de- 
veloped by their work as leaders. Thus the pro- 
gressive Angels are intervening to guide the fifth 
post-Atlantean civilization by means of capacities 
which they themselves had won during the third 
or Egypto-Chaldseic civilization. Through the 
progress they make they are acquiring for them- 



1 \\ AND OF MANKIND 71 

quite special capabilities, for they are 
qualifying themselves to receive the influx of fora is 
emanating from the most important Being in the 
who lution of the Earth. The power of the 

Christ is working in them; for that power works 

only on the physical world through Jesus of 

Nazareth — hut also in the spiritual worlds upon the 

super-human beings. The Christ exists not only 

the earth hut also for these other beings. The 
beings who guided the old Egypto-Chaldaeic civili- 
zation were not at that time under the direction of 
the Christ, hut have only placed themselves under 
His guidance since. And their progress consists in 
their following Him in the higher worlds, so that 
they may guide our fifth post-Atlantean period of 
civilization in accordance with His influence. And 
the remaining behind of those beings of whom it 
has been said that they operate as obstructive 
powers, is due to their not having put themseb 
under the leadership of the Christ, and thus they ' 
continue to work independently of Him. Hence 
the following state of things will become more and 
more evident in human evolution: There will be a 
materialistic movement under the guidance of the 
backward Egypto-Chaldanc spirits. It will have a 
materialistic character, and the greater pari of 
what in all countries, may be called contemporary 



/2 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

* 

materialistic science is under this influence. There 
are, for example, people to-day who say that our 
earth in its primary origin consisted of atoms. 
Who instils this thought into men's minds? It is 
the superhuman angel beings who had remained 
behind during the Egypto-Chaldseic period. But, 
side by side with this movement, there is another 
making itself felt, the one which has as its goal that 
man shall eventually find in all that he does, that 
which may be called the Christ-principle. 

Now what will those beings teach who attained 
their goal in the old Egypto-Chaldseic sphere of 
civilization, and who then learned to know the 
Christ ? They will be able to instill into man other 
thoughts than that there are only material atoms ; 
for they will be able to teach that, even to the 
minutest particle of the world, the substance is 
permeated with the Spirit of the Christ. And, 
strange as it may seem, there will be in the future, 
chemists and physicists who will not teach chem- 
istry and physics as they are now taught under the 
influence of the backward Egypto-Chaldaeic spirits ; 
but who will teach that "Matter is built up in the 
way in which the Christ gradually ordained it." 
The Christ will be found working even in the very 
laws of chemistry and physics. It is a spiritual 
chemistry, and spiritual physics that will come In 



OF M \X \\n OF MANKIND 73 

the future. To-day such a statement appears cer- 
tainly to many people as something fanciful or 
worse than that, but in many eases the sense of the 
future is folly to the past. The factors which in 

this sense enter into the evolution of human civiliza- 
tion are already there for the careful observer; but 
such an one will know quite well the objections 
which may, with apparent justice, he urged against 
such alleged folly from the modern scientific or 
philosophic point of view. 

such hypotheses we are able to understand 
what advantage the guiding superhuman beings 
have compared with man. Humanity learned to 
know Christ in the fourth civilization period of the 

st-Atlantean times, i.e., in the Graeco-Roman 
epoch, for it was in the course of this civilization 
that the Christ-event found its place in evolution, 
and it was then that man learned to know the 
Christ. The guiding superhuman beings, however, 
learned to know Him during the Egypto-Chaldzeic 
times, and worked themselves up to Him. Then 
during the Graeco-Roman civilization they had to 
leave man to his own fate in order that, later on, 
they might re-enter the sphere of human evolution. 
And if nowadays theosophy is cultivated, that signi- 

S nothing else than a recognition of the fact that 
the superhuman beings who formerly guided 



74 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

humanity are now continuing their task as leaders 
in such a way as to be under the direct guidance of 
the Christ themselves. Thus it is with other beings 
also. 

In the ancient Persian epoch, the leadership of 
humanity was apportioned to the Archangels. 
They put themselves under the direction of the 
Christ earlier than did the beings in the rank next 
below them. Of Zarathustra it can be said that 
pointing to the sun, he spoke to his followers and 
his people in some such words as these: "In the 
sun there lives the great Spirit Ahura Mazd'ao, who 
will one day come down to the earth." For the be- 
ings out of the region of the Archangels who 
guided Zarathustra, pointed to the great sun- 
leader, who had not at that time come down upon 
the earth, but had only begun his journey thither in 
order, later on, to enter directly into the earth evo- 
lution. And the guiding beings who directed the 
great teachers of the Indians, also pointed these to 
the Christ of the future ; for it is a mistake to think 
that these teachers had no foreknowledge of the 
Christ. They said that He was "beyond their 
sphere" and that they "could not attain" unto Him. 

As now in our fifth period of civilization, it is the 
Angels who bring down the Christ into our 
spiritual evolution, so the sixth period of civiliza- 



OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 75 

•i will be directed by beings who belong to the 
rani the Archangels who guided the ancient 

Persian civilization. And spirits o\ Personality — 
the Primal Towers — or Archai — who guided 
humanity during the ancient Indian epoch will have 
|( humanity in the seventh period of civiliza- 
q. In the Graeco-Roman period, the Christ de- 
nded from the heights of the spirit-world and 
d Himself in the physical body of Jesus of 
Nazareth. He then came down as far as the physi- 
cal world. It will be possible to find Him in the 
w«>rld immediately above ours when humanity shall 
have become sufficiently ripe. It will not be pos- 
sible in the future to find Him in the physical world, 
but only in the world immediately above, for 
human beings will not always remain the same ; 
they will become more mature, and will then find 
the Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul found 
Him in his experience before Damascus, which 
nt prophetically foreshadowed the future means 
of finding the Christ. And since in our times the 
same :u r reat teachers who have already guided man- 
kind through the Egyptian Civilization arc- work- 
ing, so also in the twentieth century it will be th< 

teachers who will lead men out to behold the 
Christ as Paul beheld Him. They will show man- 
kin < the Christ not only works upon the earth, 



76 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

but how He spiritualizes the whole solar system. 
And those who will be the reincarnated holy 
teachers of India in the seventh period of civiliza- 
tion will proclaim the Spirit Who was foreshadowed 
through the undivided Brahma, to whom however 
the right content and meaning could only be given 
through the Christ, as the great, the immense 
Spirit, of Whom they formerly said that He 
hovered above their sphere. Thus will humanity 
be led upwards from stage to stage into the 
spiritual world. 

To speak in this way about the Christ — how He 
is the leader of the higher hierarchies also in the 
successive worlds, is to teach the science which, 
under the title of modern esotericism, has en.dured 
into our civilization since the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, and which, as has been shown, had from 
that time become necessary. If from this aspect 
we observe more closely the Being Who lived in 
Palestine, and Who consummated the Mystery of 
Golgotha, then we find the following: 

Up to the present time many ideas concerning 
the Christ have found expression. There was for 
instance the idea of certain Christian Gnostics in 
the first centuries, w T ho said that the Christ Who 
lives in Palestine was not present in any physical 
body of flesh at all ; that He had only an apparent 



• OF MAX AND OF MANKIND 77 

bod>- — an etheric body which had become physic- 
ally visible; 50 that His death on the Cross had 
been no real death hut only an apparent one, for 
the very reason that only an etherie body was 
present. Then we find the various disputes among 
those who professed Christianity, as for example, 
the well-known Controversy between the Arians 
and Athenatians, etc., and the most varied explana- 
tions concerning what the Christ really was. And 
indeed right up to our own times people express 
and have expressed the most varied ideas concern- 
the Christ. 

Mow spiritual science must recognize in Christ 
not merely an earthly but also a cosmic Being. In a 

:ain sense man is, taken as a whole, a cosmic 
being*. He lives a twofold life — one in a physical 
body from birth to death, another in the spiritual 
worlds between death and a new birth. When he is 
incarnated in a physical body, he is living in de- 
pendence on the earth, because the physical body is 
restricted by the forces and conditions of existence 
belonging to the earth. A man, however, does not 
only take the substances and forces of the earth 
into himself, but is joined to the whole of the 

rth's organism. When he has passed through 
ath, he does not any longer bel 
the forces of the earth : but it would be incorrect to 



7§ THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

imagine that he then belongs to no forces at all, 
for he is then connected with the forces of the solar 
system and the more distant star-systems. In this 
way, between death and a new birth, he lives in the 
domain of the cosmic, just as in the period between 
birth and death he lived in the domain of the 
earthly. From death to a new birth he belongs to 
the cosmos, as on the earth he belongs to the ele- 
ments — Air, Water, and Earth. Accordingly, 
while he is passing through a life between death 
and a new birth, he comes into the region of cosmic 
influences, for the planets send forth not merely the 
physical forces of what astronomy teaches, such as 
gravitation and others, but also spiritual forces, 
and with these spiritual powers of the cosmos man 
is connected — each person in a special manner ac- 
cording to his own individuality. If he is born in 
Europe, he lives in a different relation to warmth 
conditions, etc., than if he had been born, let us 
say, in Australia. Similarly, during his life be- 
tween death and a new birth, one person may stand 
more closely related to the spiritual powers of 
Mars, another to those of Jupiter, others again to 
those of the whole planetary system in general, and 
so on. It is also these forces which bring man back 
again to the earth. Thus before he is born he is 
living in connection with the collective whole of 
stellar space. 



OF M \X \M> OF MANKIND 79 

According to the way in which a man stands in- 
dividually related to the cosmic system, SO arc the 
forces directed which lead him to this or that set of 
parents and to this or that locality. The impetus. 

the inclination to incarnate here or there, in this 

that family, in this or that people, at this or that 

time, depends on how the person was organically 

connected with the cosmic before birth. In former 

times, in that territory where the German tongue 

was spoken, a specially apt expression was used 

whereby to indicate a person's entrance into the 

world through birth. When a person was born, 

people said that in such and such a place he had 

come young" (jung-geworden). Therein lies 

an unconscious reference to the fact that man in 

the time between death and a new birth continues 

at first to be subject to the powers which had made 

him old in a previous incarnation, but that before 

birth there come in their place such forces as again 

make him "young/ 1 Thus Goethe in "Faust" still 

xpression "to become young in Nebel- 

land" — Nebelland being the old name for mediaeval 

-many. 

truth underlying the casting of a hoi 
that those who know these things can read the 
forces which determine a person's physical exist- 
enc pe is allotted to a persi m 



So THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

because, within it, those forces find expression 
which have led him into being. If, for example, in 
the horoscope, Mars stands over Aries (the Ram) 
that signifies that certain of the Aries forces are 
not allowed to pass through Mars — and are 
weakened. Thus is a man put into his place within 
physical existence, and it is in accordance with his 
horoscope that he guides himself before entering 
upon earthly existence. This subject, which in our 
times seems so much a thing of chance should not 
be touched upon without our attention being called 
to the fact that nearly everything practiced in this 
connection to-day is simply dilettantism — a pure 
superstition — and that for the external world the 
true science of these matters has been for the most 
part completely lost. Consequently, the principal 
things which have been said here are not to be 
judged according to that which nowadays fre- 
quently leads a questionable existence under the 
name of Astrology. 

Xow it is the active forces of the stellar world 
that impel man into physical incarnation ; and when 
clairvoyant consciousness observes a person, it can 
perceive in his organization how this has resulted 
from the co-operation of cosmic forces. We may 
now attempt to illustrate this hypothetically, but in 
a form corresponding entirely with clairvoyant ob- 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 8l 

If a person's physical brain were ex- 
tracted and its construction clairvoyantly ex- 
amined, SO that it might be seen how certain parts 
are situated in certain places, and send out append- 
Sj it would be found that the braill of each 
individual is different. No two people have brains 
alike. Then let tis imagine further that this brain 
ild be photographed in its complete structure so 
that one would have a kind of half-sphere in which 
ry detail was visible, then this would make a 
different picture in the case of each person. And if 
were to photograph a person's brain at the 
moment of birth and then photograph also the 
heaven- lying exactly over the person's birthplace, 
then this latter picture would be of exactly the 
same appearance as that of the human brain.- 

As certain centres were arranged in the latter, so 
would the stars be in the photograph of the 
heavens Man has within himself a picture of the 
heavens, and every man has a different one, accord- 
whether he was born in this place or that, 
and at this or that time. This is one indication that 
man is born from out of the whole cosm< 

When we keep this clearly in view we can rise to 

the idea of hdw the macrocosm manifests itself in 

each separate individual, and then, starting from 
this point; we can attain a conception of how it 



82 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

showed itself in the Christ. But if we were to im- 
agine the Christ after the Baptism of John as 
though the macrocosm had then been living in 
Him in the same way as in other people, we should 
be mistaken. 

Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth : His 
conditions of existence were quite exceptional. At 
the beginning of our era two boys were born and 
named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan 
line of the house of David, and the other through 
the Solomon line of the same house. These two 
children were not born quite at the same time, but 
nearly so. In the Jesus descended from Solomon, 
Who is described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, 
there was incarnated the same individuality who 
had formerly lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so 
that in this Child Jesus there appears the re- 
incarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The indi- 
viduality of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, 
as St. Matthew 7 says, His twelfth year. In that 
year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and 
passed over into that of the other Child Jesus 
Whom the Gospel of St. Luke describes. In conse- 
quence of this the latter child became suddenly 
quite different. The parents were astonished when 
they found Him in Jerusalem in the temple after 
the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into Him. 



OF MAX AND OF M WKixn 83 

This is intimated when it is said that the Child after 
havi n lost and found again in the temple, 

Ice that his parents did not recognize Him. 

They only knew Him — the Child descended from 

n as lie had been before Up to this time. But 

when lie began to reason with the doctors in the 

pie, it was possible for Him to speak as He did 

spirit of Zarathustra had come into 

Him. Until the thirtieth year did the spirit of 

rathustra live in the Jesus who was descended 

from the Nathan line of the house of David. In 

this body He ripened to a still higher perfection. 

The remark must here be added that as regards 

this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra 

W lived, an extraordinary feature was, that from 

the spiritual worlds the Buddha rayed forth his 

impulses into its astral body. 

The oriental tradition is correct which says that 

the Buddha was born as a "Bodhisatva," and only 

during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth year, 

the dignity of a Buddha. When the 

utama Buddha was a little child, the Indian sage 

ita came weeping into the royal palace of his 

fat! ddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, 

he knew that this King's son would become the 

Buddha, an n old man, he felt that he 

• longer be livinj e that event take 



84 Till-: SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

place. Now this sage was born again in the time of 
Jesus of Nazareth. It is he who is brought before 
us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the 
temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the 
Child Jesus descended from Nathan. And seeing 
this he was able to say: "Lord, now lettest Thou 
Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my 
Master." What he had not been able to see pre- 
viously in India, he saw through the astral body of 
the Boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke's 
Gospel, the Bodhisatva become a Buddha. 

All this was necessary in order that that body 
might be produced which received the baptism of 
St. John in the Jordan. At that moment the indi- 
viduality of Zarathustra left the threefold body, the 
physical, the etheric and the astral body of that 
Jesus Who had grown up in so complicated a man- 
ner, in order that the spirit of Zarathustra might be 
able to dwell in Him. Through two possibilities of 
development which were given in the two Jesus- 
Children, the reincarnated Zarathustra had to pass, 
and thus there stood before the Baptist the body of 
Jesus of Nazareth and in it from that time onwards 
there acted the cosmic individuality of the Christ. 
Now, as we have shown, in the case of any other 
human being, the cosmic spiritual laws work upon 
him only in so far that they give him a start in 



OF M \\ WD OF MAX KIND 85 

rth-life. Afterwards there appear in opposition 
to these laws, others which arise out of the con- 
ditions of the earth-evolution. In the case of the 
Christ Jesus, after the baptism of John the cosmic- 
ritual forces alone remained effective without 
being influenced in any way through the laws of the 
earth evolution, 

Thus in Palestine during the time that Jesus of 
Nazareth walked on earth as Christ-Jesus, — during 
the three last years of his life, from his thirtieth to 
his thirty-third year, the entire Being of the cosmic 
Christ was acting uninterruptedly upon Him, and 
was working into Him. The Christ stood always 
tinder the influence of the entire cosmos — He made 
no step without this working of the cosmic forces 
into and in Him. That which here took place in 
Jesus of Nazareth was a continual realization of 
the horoscope, for at every moment there occurred 
that which otherwise happens only at a person's 
birth. This could be so only because the whole 
body of Jesus descended from Nathan had re- 
mained open to tin- influence of the sum total of the 
ces of the cosmic spiritual hierarchies which 
direct our earth. If thus the whole spirit of the 
co> trked into the Christ Jesus, who was it 

that went, for example, to Capernaum or anywhere 
He who went about as a bring upon the 



86 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

earth appeared quite like any other man. The 
forces active within Him, however, were the cosmic 
forces, coming from the sun and stars ; and these 
directed His body. And it was always in accord- 
ance with the collective Being of the whole Uni- 
verse with whom the earth is in harmony, that all 
which the Christ Jesus did took place. It is be- 
cause of this that in the case of the acts of the 
Christ-Jesus there is so often some slight hint 
given in the Gospels, about the relative grouping 
of the stars at the time. We read in St. John's 
Gospel how the Christ finds His first disciples. 
There we are told : "It was about the tenth hour/' 
because in this fact the spirit of the whole cosmos 
found expression in conformity with the appointed 
moment of time. Such intimations are less clear 
in the other Gospel passages, but he who can truly 
read the Gospel finds them everywhere. From this 
point of view also the miracles are to be judged. 
Let us take one passage, — The one that runs thus : 
"When the sun was set, they brought the sick unto 
Him, and He healed them." What does that mean ? 
The evangelist is drawing attention to the fact that 
this healing was connected with the whole position 
of the constellations, and that at the time in ques- 
tion, the constellations throughout the heavens 
stood in such a way as could only have happened 



OF MAN AND OF MAX KIND < s 7 

when the sun had set. The meaning of that, at the 
time, the requisite healing forces could make them- 

Ives felt after sun-set, and the Christ Jesus is 
represented as the intermediary Who brought the 
sick into connection with the forces of the cosmos 
which, just at that time could work amatively. 
These forces were the same as those which worked 
Christ in Jesus. It was through the presence of 
Christ that the healing took place, because in 
consequence of the same, the sick person was ex- 
posed to the healing forces of the Cosmos which 
could only work as they did when they were in the 
right relationship to time and space. Thus these 
forces worked on the sick person through their 
representative the Christ. But it was only just dur- 

g the time of Christ on earth that they could so 
work. It was only then that such a connection 
existed between the cosmic constellations and the 
powers of the human organism, that for certain 
illnesses, healing could intervene when through the 
instrumentality of the Christ Jesus, the cosmic 
grouping of the same forces was able to work on 
men. A repetition of this relationship in the evolu- 
tion of the cosmos and the earth is as little possible 
as is a second incarnation of the Christ in a human 
body. Regarded in this way, the' life of the Chri-t 
arthly expressii m >f a definite 



88 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

connection between the cosmos and the forces of 
man. The tarrying of a sick person by the side of 
Christ means that through the proximity of Christ, 
this sick person found himself in such a relation 
with the macrocosm that the latter could work 
upon him curatively. 

Therewith the points of view have been specified 
which enable us to discern how the guidance of 
humanity has come under the influence of the 
Christ. The other forces, however, which had re- 
mained behind in the Egypto-Chaldseic times 
worked further side by side with those that are 
permeated by the Christ. This is evident even in 
the attitude frequently adopted to-day towards the 
Gospels. Literary works appear in which great 
pains are taken to show that the Gospels can be 
understood through an astrological interpretation. 
The greatest opponents of the Gospels employ this 
astrological interpretation in such a manner that, 
the way, for example, taken by the Archangel 
Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary is supposed to 
signify nothing more than the progress of the sun 
from the constellation of Virgo to another. This, 
in a certain sense, is correct, except that these 
thoughts were poured in this manner into our age 
by the beings who had remained behind during the 



OF max \xi> OF M \x KIND - s <) 

tialdaeic Period, Under such an influence 
people are induced to a make-belief that the G< 

•it only allegories in the place of definite 
smic relations. The truth really is, that in the 

Christ the whole cosmos finds expression and 
tin- 'lie can express the life of the Christ by 

meeting its separate events with the cosmic re- 
lations which work into Earth existence unceas- 
ingly through the Christ. A right understanding of 
this matter will thus lead to a full recognition of 
the Christ, as having lived on earth, whereas the 
mentioned error, if it were true, would mean 
that the Christ life in the Gospels is expressed by 
nsteljation and shows that it was only a 
matter of constellations being treated allegorically, 
and that there was no real earthly Christ at all. 

If a comparison were to be used, we might think 
of each human being as represented by a spherical 
mirror — which, if it were set up, would give pic- 
tures of all its surroundings. Let us suppose we 
were to trace with a pencil the outine of all that is 
shown from the surroundings. We could then take 
the mirror and carry the picture about with US 
win tre went. Let this he a symbol for the 

fact that when a person is horn, he brings with him 
a c the cosmos in himself, and afterwards 

carries about with him all through his life the eff< 



<;o THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

of this one picture. The mirror might, however, 
be left untouched By the pencil, so that wherever 
the person carried it, it would depict the immediate 
surroundings. It then would always be giving a 
picture of the collective environment. This would 
be a symbol of the Christ from the baptism by St. 
John up to the mystery of Golgotha. That which, 
in the case of any other person, passes into his 
earthly existence at birth only flowed into the 
Christ-Jesus at every moment. And when the 
mystery of Golgotha was consummated, that which 
had been radiating from out the cosmos passed 
over into the spiritual substance of the earth, and 
has from that time forward been united with the 
spirit of the earth. 

When St. Paul became clairvoyant before 
Damascus, he could recognize that That which had 
formerly been in the cosmos has passed over into 
the spirit of the earth. Of this every one can be 
convinced who can bring his soul into such a con- 
dition that he can have the same experience as had 
St. Paul. It is in the twentieth century that those 
people will first appear who will have St. Paul's 
experience of the Christ event in a spiritual way. 

Whereas up to our times this event would be ex- 
perienced only by such persons as had gained clair- 
voyant powers by means of an esoteric training, 



OF MAN \\1> OF MANKIND <) I 

hereafter to look upon the Christ in the spiritual 
sphere surrounding the earth will be possible for 

the advanced powers of the soul in the course of 
the natural evolution o\ humanity. This — as a re- 
ted experience Of the event before Damascus — 
will be possible for some people from a certain point 

time in the twentieth century. The number of 

such people will afterwards increase, until in the 

stant future, it will be a natural [acuity of the 

human soul. 

* * * 

With the entrance of Christ into the evolution of 
the earth an entirely new impulse or direction was 

en to evolution. External facts of history also 
express this. In the early times of post-Atlantean 

►lution men knew very well that above them 
there was not merely a physical Mars, but that 
what they saw as Mars, Jupiter or Saturn was the 
^ion for a spiritual being. In later times this 
perception was completely forgotten. The heavenly 
bodies became, according to human ideas, mere 
bodies to be estimated according to their physical 
condition. And in the Middle Ages people saw in 
connection with the stars only what the eyes can 
sphere of Venus, the sphere of the Sun, 
the of Mars, etc., up to the sphere of tl 

fixerl stars; and then came the eighth sphere lik< 



92 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

solid blue wall behind. Then Copernicus appeared 
and broke down the idea that only that which is 
perceptible to the senses can be authoritative. The 
modern physical scientists may indeed say : "It is 
madness to declare that the world is Maya, or il- 
lusion, and that you must look into a spiritual 
world in order to see the truth, for in spite of all 
you say true science is that which relies on the 
senses and notifies what these senses tell." But 
when did astronomers rely only on the senses? 
Surely at the very time when that astronomical 
science was dominant which is attacked by the 
science of to-day ! It was at that time when 
Copernicus began to think out what exists in the 
cosmic space beyond the evidence of the senses, 
that our modern astronomy as a science began. 
And so it is in every domain of science. Every- 
where that science, in the most modern sense of 
the word, has arisen, it has done so in opposition 
to what had been apparent to the senses. When 
Copernicus declared "what you see is Maya — or 
deception, rely on what you cannot see," then the 
science came into being which is recognized as 
such to-day. It might thus be said to the repre- 
sentative of modern science "your science itself 
only became 'science' when it was no longer willing 
to depend upon the senses only." 



OF MAX AND OF M VNKIND 93 

irdano Bruno came as philosophical in- 
terpreter of the teachings of Copernicus. He led 

the gaze of man OUt into cosmic space, and an- 
nounced that what people had called the limitations 

-pace, what they had placed there as the eighth 
sphere limiting everything in space — was in reality 
no limitation; it was Maya, or illusion; for an in- 
finite number of worlds had been poured forth into 

smic space. That which was formerly considered 
to be the boundary of space was shown to be only 
the boundary of the sense-world of man, and if we 
direct our gaze beyond the sense-w<orld, we shall no 
longer see the world only as known to the senses, 
but we shall also recognize Infinity. 

From this it is apparent how the course of 
human evolution has been such that man started 
from an originally spiritual view of the cosmos and 
in the course of time lost it. In its place there 
came a mere >ense-perception of the world. Then 
there came into evolution the Christ Impulse. 
Through this, mankind was led to stamp the 

ritual view once more upon the materialistic. At 
that moment when Giordano Bruno burst the fet- 
ters of the sense illusion, the Christ evolution was 
so far advanced, that the soul power, which had 
been kindled by the Christ Impulse, could then be 
active within him. Therewith an indication is giv( n 



94 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

of the whole significance of how the life of Christ 
penetrates all human evolution, an evolution only 
at the beginning of which humanity stands to-day. 

To w T hat then does spiritual science now aspire? 
It completes the work begun for external science 
by Giordano Bruno and others in that it says : that 
which external science is able to perceive is Maya, 
or illusion. Just as formerly one looked to the 
"eighth sphere" and thought that space was there- 
by bounded, so contemporary human thought be- 
lieves that man is shut in or enclosed between birth 
and death. Spiritual science, however, expands 
man's vision by directing his attention out and be- 
yond the limits of birth and death. 

There is a continuous chain in human evolution 
which such ideas as these make us recognize. And 
in the true sense of the words, that which resulted 
in the conquest of sense illusion through Copernicus 
and Giordano Bruno, already proceeded from the 
inspiration due to that spiritual current which is 
now working in the modern spiritual science of 
theosophy. What one might call the newer eso- 
tericism worked in a mysterious manner on Co- 
pernicus, Bruno, Kepler and others. Those there- 
fore who now stand, base their thought on founda- 
tions laid by Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and 
do not wish to accept theosophy, are unfaithful to 



OF MAN AND OF MANKIND 95 

their own traditions in desiring to hold fast by 

sense illusion. Hut spiritual science demonstrates 

that, as Giordano Bruno forced a way through the 

blue firmament of heaven, even so does this science 
break down the barriers of birth and death for man 
by showing how he originates from out of the 
macrocosm, lives in a physical existence, passes 
through death, and re-enters macrocosmic life. 
And what we see in a limited degree in each indi- 
vidual meets us unrestrictedly and in a larger sense 
in the representative of the spirit of the cosmos — 
in the Christ-Jesus. Once and once only could that 
impulse be given which the Christ gave. Once only 
could the whole cosmos be thus reflected, for the 
conjunction of the stars which then took place can 
never be repeated. In order to give an impulse to 
the earth, this conjunction was obliged to work 
through a human body. As it is true that this same 
grouping cannot occur a second time, so it is 

/.ally true that the Christ was only once in- 
carnated. Only if one did not know that the Christ 

the representative of the whole universe and only 

if it were impossible to win one's way to thisChrist- 

a, the elements for which are given through 

:ience — only then would it be possible to 

maintain that Christ could appear more than 01 

upon the earth. 



96 THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

Thus we see how an idea of Christ arises out of 
the new spiritual .science or theosophy, which re- 
veals to man in a new form his connection with the 
whole macrocosm. Certainly, in order to gain a 
true knowledge of the Christ, those inspiring forces 
are absolutely necessary which are now being be- 
stowed by those same superhuman beings who 
formerly guided the Egypto-Chaldseic epoch and 
who have now put themselves under the Christ. 
There is need of a new inspiration of this kind, of 
an inspiration which the great esoteric teachers of 
the middle ages had prepared from the thirteenth 
century onwards, and which from this time forth 
must ever come more and more into publicity. 
When man, according to the meaning of this 
science, prepares his soul aright for the knowledge 
of the spirit-world, he can then hear clairaudiently 
and he can see cl^irvoyantly what is revealed by 
the old Chaldaeic and Egyptian angel beings who 
are now again acting as spiritual leaders under the 
guidance of the Christ. That which humanity will 
some time later actually gain thereby could only be 
prepared in the first centuries of Christianity and up 
to our times. 

Consequently we may say that in the future there 
will live in the hearts of men an idea of the Christ 
incomparable in greatness with anything which 



I >r MAX A\n OF MANKIND 97 

humanity has SO far recognized, That which arose 
I impulse through the Christ, and has lived 

•' Him up to the present time — even in 
the best representatives of the Christ- 
principle — is only a preparation tor the true under- 
standing of the Christ. It would he strange indeed 
who in the West gave expres 
uch a way as this to the Christ-idea, it were 
brought as a reproach that they do not stand on 
the foundation of western Christian tradition, hut 
quite possible, for this western tradition does 
\ any means suffice to help us to comprehend 
the Christ of the near future. 

From the hypothesis of eastern esotericism we 
can see the spiritual direction of humanity gradu- 
ally flowing into what may be in a real, true sense 
called the guidance, which comes from the Christ- 
impulse. That which is appearing as the new 
esotericism will flow slowly into the hearts of men, 
and the spiritual guidance of men and of humanity 
will ever more and more he consciously seen in 
such a light. We realize to ourselves how at firsl 
the Christ-principle dowed into the hearts of men 

because the Christ had gone about Palestine in the 
sical body Of JeSUS Of Nazareth. Cater men 

-tally surrendered themselves entirely to a re- 

e on the world i . and could only re 



9$ THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

the impulse which corresponded to their percep- 
tion. Afterwards that same impulse so worked 
through the inspiration of the new esotericism that 
such spirits as Nicholas Cusamus, Copernicus and 
Galileo were able to be inspired and Copernicus, 
for instance, was enabled to make this assertion : 
"That which is evident to the senses cannot teach 
the truth about the solar system ; if we want to find 
the truth we must investigate behind sense appear- 
ances/' At that time men, even spirits like Gior- 
dano Bruno, were not yet ripe enough to join con- 
sciously to the new esoteric stream. The spirit of 
the movement had to work in them tmconsciously. 
Yet powerful and magnificent was the announce- 
ment of Giordano Bruno : "When a human being 
enters into existence by means o'f birth, then it is 
something macrocosmic that concentrates itself as 
a monad ; and when a human being passes through 
death the monad spreads itself out again ; that 
which was enclosed within the body spreads itself 
out in the cosmos in order to draw itself together 
again in other stages of existence, and again to 
spread itself out." There Bruno gave expression 
to mighty conceptions which, even if expressed in 
stammering tongue, were yet in entire accord with 
the sense of the new esotericism. 



( >F M \N AND ( »l- MAX KIND 99 

The spiritual influences which lead humanity 

ne< work in such a way that man is always 

tiscious of them. For example, they put Galileo 

in the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands had seen the 

church lamp there, hut they have not seen it as 
ilileo. Me saw the church lam]) swinging; 
mpared the time i^\ its oscillation with the heat 
his own pulse; found that the church lam]) 
ung in a regular rhythm resembling his puis 
it; and from this discovered the laws of the 
pendulum in the sense oi modern physics. Anyone 
uainted with contemporary physics knows that 
would not he possible without GaliU 
principle. In this way the force was then working 
which is now appearing as spiritual science ; ( ialileo 
in the cathedral of Pisa before the oscil- 
lating church lamp, and modern physics gained its 
principles. In such a mysterious way do the guid- 
iritual forces of humanity perform their 
rk. 

We are now approaching the time when people 
nscious of these guiding powers. 
We shall always come to a better and better und< 

>t what has to happen in the future if we 

htly understand what is working inspirationally 

as the new ricism, and which shows that the 

• iritual b< I by the ancient 



ioo THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

Egyptians when the Greeks asked them about their 
teachers, who then ruled as gods, are now again 
assuming control, through having placed them- 
selves under the leadership of the Christ. Ever 
more and more will men feel how they can cause 
to reappear in a brighter lustre, in a nobler style 
and on a higher level, that which was pre-Christian. 
The consciousness necessary for the present time, 
which must be an intensified consciousness, ought 
to give us a feeling of our high duty and great re- 
sponsibility in reference to the recognition of the 
spiritual world, and this can only penetrate into 
our soul when we have recognized in the sense 
indicated, what is the task of spiritual science. 

THE END. 



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